


Mercy for the Damned

by Darksidekelz



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Afterlife, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:34:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8495695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darksidekelz/pseuds/Darksidekelz
Summary: The most wicked of Cybertronians have perished.  But what awaits them but Hell beyond the grave?





	1. The Wicked Will Perish

**Author's Note:**

> There may be shipping later, and the rating may go up later. Still gotta figure out exactly what this is, but I've been on a DJD kick lately, and this is the result of it.

_Primus, spare my spark._

Pain came first – the pain of his body being systematically torn to shreds from the inside out, through a means and manner that defied the laws of nature.  His consciousness had been scattered between hundreds of tiny pieces – bits of frame, internal mechanisms, fuel, every bit of him that had been splattered into nothingness in that final attack.  It was maddening to be spread so thinly, to see the emptiness of the void from each and every possible angle, to hear the vast nothing in surround sound that stretched onwards for miles, to feel . . . to feel the remains of the mech that had once been Forestock, no, _Vos_ , broken, tattered, split and fractured, dragged back to his core, only to be torn to pieces, again and again, trapped in an endless cycle of his own final moments.

This was . . . was he dead?

Yes.

Megatron had killed him. 

What had become of the others, he couldn't say, but their prospects were dim.  Vos was not as big or strong as his companions, but Megatron had lifted him into the air by the powers of his own mind, had destroyed him – stripped him of his identity, and annihilated everything that he was, all that he'd ever been.

The dream was dead.

Now, there was only this.

Whatever this was.

Torture.  Hell.  An eternity of agony for a lifetime of sin – that was how it worked, wasn't it?  He railed against the injustice of it all.  Vos didn't belong in the Pit!  He'd never done anything wrong!

He'd been devout.  He believed in his cause whole-heartedly, had followed Tarn, Megatron, the Decepticon cause with every ounce of his being.  And until the end, he had believed their cause to be just and true.  After all, did Primus himself not command his followers to smite the wicked?  True, he had taken much pleasure in the smiting part, but he'd never done anything wrong.  This wasn't fair!  He'd been good!  He'd been pure!  And what had it all been for?

He'd still wound up here, trapped in a cycle of unending pain and emptiness.

He wished that Tarn was here.

 No. 

If Vos had been cast into the Pit, then it was only because he'd chosen to put his faith in Tarn.  Clearly, that had been the wrong choice.  Tarn could burn, for all he cared!  In fact, if he somehow broke free of his own, personal Hell, he would find a way to hunt down that sick fuck, and give him a piece of his mind.  Tarn had doomed them, condemned them, but why should the followers be punished for the sins of the leader?

_You could have stopped at any point._

Vos brushed the thought aside, trying his hardest to condense his consciousness into a tiny ball.  Stopping had never been an option.  He was a rifle – a weapon!  He wasn't meant to think for himself!  He needed someone to wield him, someone to tell him what to do!

_More excuses._

His empty spark burst outward, a red, hot fire, lashing out like an atomic bomb, its shockwave ripping apart this barren nothingness, in the same way that Megatron had ripped his own body apart.  For the first time, there was sound – an agonizing, eldritch roar, that emitted, not from the great beyond, but from his own non-existent throat.  Only, it existed now.  The world spread out, in all of its twisted, blotted glory, an endless sunset, hot fire below, an icy eternity above, splotches of light and color flickering in and outward like the art of a newspark, or a savant.

Likewise, Vos had a body now.  It was the same thin, spindly frame he'd always had, but somehow frail, insubstantial, as though it would burst away into nothingness should he allow his attention to wander for even a moment.  What was happening to him?

He was terrified, of this great, mysterious unknown, in a way that was completely foreign to him.  He was no stranger to brushes with death, with pain, with suffering, and yet, ten million years of life had never left him in such a state of constant, all-consuming dread.

He wanted out, he wanted away, he wanted to go _home_! 

Long limbs, fresh and new, were drawn inwards, towards his chest, until he was curled up in a ball, until the world around him closed in, tight, tight, _tight_ , until there was no room to move, had he tried, until four heavy walls were pressed in around him, dark, yes, but substantial. 

His box.

He was safe in here, safe from whatever judgment awaited him out _there_.  He didn't have to see that ugly world, didn't have to hear the infinite sound of his own screaming.  All he had to do was stay put, close his eyes, and hope that in another eight million years, Megatron could open the box and . . .

Light poured in on him, cool air breathed against his plating.  His box was open.

Crammed in as he was, he couldn't react as quickly as he would have liked, but he did online his optical sensors, allow his helm to twist, until he was gazing into the familiar light, one more mountain of a mech staring down into his safe space, dragging him out into the wicked world beyond.  But this time, it wasn't Megatron.

"Vos!  Vos, you're here!  Primus, I was worried sick!"  Tesarus's massive hands were incapable of forcing themselves into the tiny space.  His attempt at doing do, only managed to find a finger half the size of Vos's head working itself into the small gap between chin and chest.  The touch felt like fire against his malleable frame, and Vos growled a warning, surprised to find that his voice sounded the same as it ever had. 

Tesarus, slow on the uptake, or not caring, let his finger trail down Vos's arm, in a sad attempt at grabbing onto his wrist.  "You're in there tight, aren't ya?  No sweat; I'll get you out."

" _Let go of me!"_ Vos hissed, though Tesarus had no way of understanding his tongue.  He tried to struggle away, but his box left him with nowhere to withdraw to.  _"I'm safe in here!  I want to stay in here!  I don't like it out there!  Leave me alone!"_

"Yeesh, Vos.  Stop wiggling for a sec, will you?  I'm trying to help."

At that moment, Primus gifted him with one of the few words of Neocybex he'd managed to learn.  "No!"  He slapped the questing fingers away, and at last, Tesarus withdrew.

"No?"  His entire frame slumped downwards, landing somewhere far below with a heavy thud.  Curious and concerned, Vos wriggled from his fetal position to peer out into the ever shifting finger-painting beyond. 

Tesarus sat now, at the bottom of a cliff, bulky knees drawn as close to his chest as his frame allowed, head slumped forward, defeated.  The geography made no sense; he'd been standing above Vos's box, seconds before.  How had he wound up all the way down there?

Vos got his answer, when the reality around him began to crumble and crack, sending his box sliding backwards into a literal crack in reality.  The box was safety, but the fear of losing Tesarus won out.  He hurled himself from his hideaway, falling a short eternity before landing, hard, on one of Tesarus's treaded shoulders.  It didn't leave him quite so broken as it should have, but his head was spinning, and his body was threatening to split into a billion fragments.  How was it that this felt worse than being blasted by the Black Block Consortia?

Belatedly, Tesarus seemed to notice the slight weight on his shoulder, and turned his head to look.  "Change your mind?"

Vos could only groan in response.  Mustering all of his willpower, he peeled himself up, falling back onto his hands and knees.  He probably should have climbed down as well, but the sensation of physical contact was too pleasant to give up on just yet.  Tesarus didn't seem to mind anyway.

"What is this place?" he asked, gazing out over the shifting yellow landscape.  There were mountains now – springing up from the ground and crumbling away again in the blink of an eye, or a short eternity.  Time seemed to be relative here, if it existed at all?  Surely it _must_.

_"The Afterspark is my guess,"_ Vos shrugged.   _"Or the Pit.  Either way, I'm fairly certain that we're dead."_

The broken dimension could make all of time and space into its plaything, and yet it _still_ couldn't lift the language barrier between the two companions.  Tesarus watched him blankly as ever, before venturing forth with his own observations.  "We're dead, aren't we?  Megatron pulled that . . . that crazy fucking superpower from nowhere – I watched you die, you know?  Watched him tear you apart from the inside out."  His entire being flickered in an existential shudder.  Vos fell through his shoulder the not-insignificant distance to the ground, though it hurt less this time. 

"Sorry, Little Buddy.  I guess you gotta keep it together around here if you wanna, well, _stay_ together."  He pressed a hand to his face.  "What a headache."

_"Are the others here?"_ Vos asked, though he didn't know why he bothered.  Tesarus glanced down at him with a perplexed stare, then shrugged.

"You think Helex and Tarn are here?  Or Kaon?"  Both fell silent at the mention of Kaon.  He hadn't deserved to die; at least Vos thought so.  He may have been too damn sentimental when it came to his pet, and perhaps a few hours (?) ago, Vos would have felt otherwise, but after Tarn had led them astray, he was more inclined than ever to resent his decisions. 

Vos had never revered Tarn quite as much as the others had – he was too new to have formed an attachment, too old to fall for the pretty words, and too different for any of it to matter.  Tarn had been a prophet, in his own eyes at least – the one who existed to preach and enforce the word of Megatron.  He was supposed to be infallible.  He was smart, brutal, classy, educated, and more powerful than the rest, but Vos had never been under the illusion that he was anything more than arrogant.  (Though he had the benefit of being privy to his less-than stellar attempts at speaking in the Primal Vernacular.  He was easier to understand if he stuck to Neocybex, and let the translation software kick in.  But that was neither here nor there.)

Vos had never followed Tarn because he thought he was a messianic figure, but rather, because he'd, on some level, agreed with him.  Megatron was everything to Vos – Megatron had saved him, Megatron had given him a second chance at life, Megatron had blessed him with a name and a purpose, had wielded him in the way he'd been created to be used – all he'd wanted was to make certain that all of Megatron's followers showed the same gratitude.

And then Megatron had defected, and the world had turned upside down.  That was fine.  Vos had known nothing _but_ war in his long life.  He'd seen powerful leaders fall, forsake their own causes, time and again.  He'd been surprised that Megatron had done the same, but to him, it had only been one more in a long line of disappointments.  For Tarn, it had been the end of everything he'd based his identity around.  For Tarn, it had been an excuse to lose his mind, to partake in one last suicidal crusade.  It had been foolish, but Vos wasn't stupid enough to say so.  Kaon found out firsthand what happened to a bot that crossed Tarn in that state.

In the end, Megatron had proven himself the almighty deity that Vos had always worshipped, as he smote him, and presumably the others as well.  His life hadn't provided him any alternative options, but in that moment, as Megatron turned his new, godlike abilities on their lot, Vos regretted ever following Tarn.

And now, though he didn't mind the presence of Tesarus – wouldn't mind seeing Helex again, or even Kaon, he wanted very much for Tarn to stay wherever he was.  Tarn had ruined everything with his arrogance; Vos wanted nothing more to do with him.

"Yeah," said Tesarus, more to himself than anything.  "I think we should find the others."  He was on his feet, without any of the intermediate steps to take him from the ground upwards.  "I don't like it here, and Tarn would be mad at me for saying this, but I kinda hate the thought of them out there on their own."

Vos pulled himself away from his bitter mulling.  Tesarus was moving, and as much as he didn't want to find Tarn, he wanted to be left alone again even less.  He scurried ahead, leaping onto Tesarus's outstretched arm, and scurrying up to his shoulder.  Was it dignified?  Not so much, but it was better than trying to keep pace with the behemoth's long strides.

"'Sides, no offense, Vos, but it would kinda be _really_ nice if you spoke Neocybex right about now.  I mean, come on – we don't even got proper bodies, and we _still_ can't understand each other?"

Vos growled his irritation, though he wasn't sure if he was mad at Tesarus for highlighting his own ineptitudes, or at the unfairness of it all.  Nothing made sense in this place.  Technically, he was fairly certain his own translation software shouldn't be functioning right now, but he'd take it.  Having companionship in this hell-dimension made it the slightest bit more bearable, but Vos had the benefit of being able to understand said companion.  Tesarus didn't even have that much.  As far as he was concerned, Vos was probably barely any better a companion than the Pet – damn the thing.

They pressed onward in silence for a long while, though in part, it was necessitated by their volatile surroundings.  Every so often, the ground ahead of them would crumble away, or change in consistency, matter, rise up into an impenetrable wall, or simply cease to be altogether.  An icy wind blew at them, its gusts strong enough to leave Vos clawing at Tesarus's treads for support.  But then, in the next moment, it was gone, replaced with a burning heat, with a thick fog, an endless abyss, a dust storm.  Cities sprang up, devoid of all life – some tall and gleaming, others, ruinous ghost towns.  A few of the places looked familiar to Vos, as if they had been pulled from long-gone memories.  There were at least two carnage-strewn battlefields that he could never have forgotten, and many more that he _didn't_ recognize, but the haunted look that Tesarus wore proved that _one_ of them did, at least.

After the third time Vos nearly found himself swept away by the environment (he'd barely managed to grab on before the sudden wall of water carried him away), Tesarus had had enough.  He plucked Vos from his shoulder using his secondary arms, and stuffed the suddenly-flailing form into his grinder, though Vos felt as though some movements along the way had been missed – like missing cells in a film. 

_"I'm fine!  I'm fine!  This is demeaning!  You don't have to coddle me!  I'm not some breakable little –"_

"Shut up, Vos.  We both know you're better off in there."

He was right, of course.  Fighting it was a pointless waste of energy, and energy was something that seemed to be in short-supply.  Vos could feel it – the need to recharge, just at the edge of his consciousness, and it terrified him.  Why did he need sleep?  What would happen if he shut down for the night?  Would he wake again?  He decided it was best not to find out.  Instead, he pulled his knees to his chest and propped himself against one of the walls of Tesarus's grinder, not caring that its teeth dug into his plating.  He liked the pain.

"Well, okay.  You don't gotta _completely_ shut up.  We can still chat, yeah?"

" . . . Okay," said Vos, the word heavily-accented, but Tesarus seemed to understand anyway.  The world around him began bouncing in slow, rolling steps as Tesarus pressed onward, though Vos's line of sight remained an empty, white skyline.  He wondered if Tesarus saw the same thing.  "What is . . . you see?" he croaked slowly, trying his hardest to mimic the broken sounds Tarn had taught him.

"What?  What do I see?  Is – is that what you said."

"Yes.  Stupid."

A moment of incoherent grumbling later, Tesarus responded.  "It's an ocean – an endless ocean of – er, oil.  Oh excuse me, _burning_ oil.  I guess a boring old _normal_ ocean was too much for this place.  Guess we're not going _that_ way anymore."

"Okay."  Vos saw no such thing, though the sky did seem to be fading to a deep green color.  _That_ was certainly peculiar.  He wondered if his different vantage point had warranted a split in perception between the two.  "I see . . . no."

"Buddy, I like that you're making the effort to talk to me, but your Neocybex is slag."

Vos snarled in response.  It wasn't like Neocybex was exactly an easy language to learn, least of all when your glitched translation software wouldn't stop trying to translate everyone's attempts to teach you new words.  " _Yeah?  Well let's see you speak MY language!"_

"Fine, fine, I'm sorry for making fun of you."  Vos doubted that he understood the words, but the sentiment rang clear at least.  "It's just –" he slumped to the ground, leaving Vos clattering around in the grinder, getting dinged up along the way.  "I don't – I don't get _any_ of this!  And Helex and Kaon and Tarn are all probably somewhere out there.  Alone.  Like you were.  Maybe in some stupid little box of their own.  And it's driving me nuts. 

"But like, what if they're not even out here?  What if we never find them?  I don't even know how I managed to find _you_!  I just, I was stumbling blindly along in the white abyss, and your stupid little box was the first thing I saw."

He sounded genuinely upset.  It was behavior ill-fitting of a Decepticon, but Vos didn't care enough to bring it up.  Megatron had killed them.  There were no more Decepticons, and there was no more cause.  Idly, Vos began to run his hand over those massive blades, providing comfort in the only way he could think to.  Tesarus sank into the touch with a soft groan.

"Primus, this sucks," he spat out eventually.  Tesarus had always been a bit on the volatile side; it seemed that dying hadn't changed _that_ at least.

"Yes," Vos agreed, drawing his knees to his chest.  Tesarus's grinder was too spacious to be his box, but he appreciated it nonetheless.  It was cozy, and safe, despite what it was primarily used for.

"I can't believe Megatron – that he did that!  Betrayed us, stripped us of our names and identities, then killed us in cold blood!  After how we'd faithfully served him – more so than any _other_ Decepticons out there!  He created us to do the things we did!  And then he fraggin' _kills_ us once he decides he doesn't wanna play anymore!  It's not right!"

It was easy to veer towards the easy route of bitterness, but as a scientist, Vos had always been a bit more receptive to new ideas than his teammates.   Four million years of war had transformed Megatron from a godlike warrior for justice, to a shriveled, sniveling, self-loathing, Autobot-loving, traitor – spewing lies at gunpoint about the cause he'd created, led, loved.  It was an insulting display, but Vos could understand where he was coming from.

Four million years of fighting would wear anyone out.  The war was over, the Decepticons had lost, Megatron was _done._ And the DJD had refused to accept it.  They'd kept right on fighting for a cause that no longer existed, and Megatron, in all his wisdom, rightly recognized that they never _would_ stop.  The only end for monsters like them was death.

_Monsters . . ._

His spark gave a painful quiver; he relished in it, forcing himself to hold back a groan.  Tesarus was still here. 

The realization seemed to make the pain pass.  How interesting.

"Tesarush?  Angry at Megatron," he said at last.

"Of course I am!  You can't mean to say you're not?"  There was a dangerous edge to his voice, but Vos saw no reason to stop.  It wasn't like Tesarus could kill him again . . . probably.

"Vos: Angry at Tarn."

"Tarn?  Why?"

Vos knew he'd never be able to explain the answer in a satisfying way to Tesarus.  And so, he didn't bother.  That, however, was clearly not enough for Tesarus.

"Megatron killed us!" he spat, revving his engine, and allowing his blades to shift, just slightly.  Vos remained steadfast in his feelings.  He'd had plenty of time to reflect on them, after all.

"Yes.  But Vos – angry – Tarn. . . . ; _Too bad it had to be YOU to find me, wouldn't you agree?_ "  He switched over to Primal Vernacular, bitterly, though his accusations lacked their usual bite.  He was tired, frustrated.  He didn't want to fight, but he didn't know what else to  do.  " _Not that it would've made a damn difference.  Not ONE of you ever learned how to communicate with me, except for the one guy I don't want to see. . . .I wish Nickel was here._ "

"Me too, buddy." 

Vos peered up at that, for all the good it did him from his current vantage.  Had he just . . .?

"I miss Nickel too.  But I think if she was here, then she'd be dead too.  And she doesn't deserve that." 

No, he would have had a bigger reaction had he understood so much.  He must have just heard Nickel's name.  And he was right about her; Vos didn't want her dead either.  She was the best out of all of them; she didn't deserve to share their fate.  Tarn had deserved to die.  And Helex and Kaon and Tesarus.  Even himself . . .  They deserved to suffer the worst kind of retribution!  It had been fun for awhile – torturing traitors, bringing out his suppressed creativity and sadism.  But it was like his old master had always said.  'The righteous prevail, and the wicked will always perish.'

_The wicked will perish._

_The wicked . . ._

_Wicked . . ._

His spark quivered again, and he hunched over around it, whining softly.  It didn't feel good anymore.  But once again, it passed in a moment.

"Vos?  Are you all right down there?"

Vos barely heard the words.  What was wrong with him?

_Wicked . . ._

He had always thought the words to be a confirmation of his own righteousness, and the failing of their victims.  They'd won, time and again and again.  They had prevailed, while those who stood against them, against Megatron, perished.  And yet, here they were now, dead.  They'd done so well for so long – smote so many in Megatron's name.  And by extension, their own names had become sacred.  Mere mention of the DJD could have a mech falling to his knees, begging, pleading, changing his ways.  It was power.  Sweet, sweet power. 

And now it was gone.

Clearly, their mistake had been turning their backs on Megatron.  He'd created them; he had every right to destroy them – he'd said it himself.  They had been wicked, _they_ had become the traitors to the cause, and for their sins, they'd paid the ultimate price.

_Wicked . . ._

His spark quivered one more time, and this time, it was all-encompassing.  Vos let out a scream, as the light of his soul burned hot, hot, _hot_ – tore itself apart from within, as his form began to dissipate, fragment, explode – plating and protoform and internal mechanisms breaking, bleeding, painting Tesarus's internals in a vivid shade of pink. 

He was falling, the light at the front of Tesarus's chest growing farther and farther away, as his body was sucked to the pit of the turning blades of the grinder – spinning, spinning, bleeding, dying.  He deserved this!  He was wicked!  He deserved to perish, not live on in some sort of somewhat-palatable afterlife with his friend. 

And so he fell, farther and farther into the vortex, shedding limbs, cables, physical form along the way, until he was barely more than a spark of unlife.  But then, something clasped around him – large, heavy, golden – Tesarus's secondary arms, squeezing his spark tightly, pulling him away from the black hole within, back into the light, until finally, Vos was no longer in the grinder.  All that remained of his essence – the vague impression of a frame that no longer existed, had been dropped into one of Tesarus's giant hands as he kept babbling words of comfort in some gibberish language, and stroking Vos with the other, as though that could bring him back from the grave.

But Vos had lost the will to fight.  He was wicked.  He deserved to perish.

His spark guttered, and consciousness ceased.

 


	2. Decepticons Don't Abandon Their Own

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tesarus will do everything in his power to protect his friends. He's done with watching them die.

"Vos?!  Vos!  Come on, Vos, pull yourself together!"  Tesarus held the tiny, flickering spark in the palm of one hand, the thick fingers of the other dancing over it, as though he could stroke life back into his friend if only he tried hard enough.

He didn't understand!  One moment Vos had been fine, sitting in his grinder, stroking its blades, making an attempt at conversation.  The next . . . Tesarus didn't know, exactly.  He'd started screaming, and then he'd . . . exploded?  That's what it had felt like, though perhaps a bit less drastic.  Vos inside of him, perfectly hunky dory.  And then suddenly, boom!  Body parts and viscera, painting his interior, wedging themselves deep between his blades (he was well-acquainted enough with the feeling to recognize it by now).  It was gross, and it was completely unprovoked.  He hadn't activated his grinder!  He was always _very_ careful about keeping it locked whenever Vos or Nickel decided to crawl up in him.  He may have been a sadistic monster, but that didn't mean he wanted his friends dead!

But the weird thing here, aside from unprovoked exploding on Vos's part, was the fact that he'd kept right on screaming, even after he no longer had a throat to produce sounds.  Vos's eerie, guttural voice had roared in his own audio receptors, and echoed throughout his grinder, until, strangely, it began fading, as though it were getting farther and farther away, as though it was being sucked deep inside of him.

And while that was terrifying on its own, the pain of it all had been the real cincher.  Vos's spark was hot – _burning_ Tesarus from the inside out, surely leaving scorch marks on even the tough metal of his blades.  And unlike Vos, Tesarus wasn't particularly big on pain.  He wanted Vos out, and he wanted him out _now_! 

His secondary hands had reached in, stretching as far as they could, and it _still_ was barely enough to brush against that heated ball of energy.  And once there, they recoiled from the pain.  But Tesarus would be damned if he let something stupid like that stop him.  It took three attempts to get his claws around that flickering thing, and it resisted his pull every step of the way.  But ultimately his will won out.  The moment Vos was freed from Tesarus's body, released into the open air, his spark cooled; the screaming stopped.  Now Tesarus was left with the fast-guttering spark of his friend, and oppressive silence all around.

"Come on, Vos!"  He stroked the little spark in a panic, unsure of what else he could do to fix this situation.  Tarn would know what to do.  Kaon would, and Helex.  Even Vos would have, if the little fucker hadn't gone and gotten himself blown up.  But not Tesarus.  He wasn't cut out for thinking – not like this.  Ask him to hunt down an elusive traitor and find a creative way to murder them, and he was the guy.  But puzzle solving?  _Saving_ people?  This was new and unfamiliar ground.  And he couldn't stand it.

He'd lost friends before.  Pit, he'd lost every friend he'd ever made in the end.  He never would have admitted it, but losing people he cared about, leaving them behind, had grown to become his greatest fear over the years.  But he also knew well that it was something that happened.  He'd lived through four million years of war.  Bots died, and there was nothing he could do about it.

But he was dead too, wasn't he?  And Vos was the only thing standing between him and . . . what?  Oblivion?  He didn't want to find out.

And he wouldn't have to.

He was going to save Vos!  He just needed to figure out how.

An idea struck him.  He stopped with his frantic stroking, instead, cupping the tiny spark in his hands, as though to prevent it from spilling out onto the ground below, and brought it close to his face.  He wasn't sure if Vos could hear him like this, but he wanted to make extra sure his words got through.

"You're okay, Vos.  Look!  See?  It's all cramped and dark in there where you are.  You like small, dark spaces, right?  That's why I found you in that stupid box."  The flickering of Vos's spark seemed to slow at that.  He must be on the right track.  "Yeah, that's right.  If you want, maybe _this_ could be your box, don't you think?  What's the difference really?  Actually?  It's better.  My hands are warmer than a box.  It's gotta be way more comfy, don't you think?"  Vos was growing stable!  Primus, he was really doing this!  Take _that_ , Tarn!

For just a moment, he opened his hands up, and chanced a glance at what lay within. 

Vos's spark was pulsing blue and white at a regular rate, like just about any other healthy spark he'd seen in his day.  Nothing special here.  He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting?  He'd been _hoping_ that he'd managed to conjure himself up a new frame, but clearly _that_ wasn't happening any time soon.  He closed his hands over it once more.

"What now, Buddy?" he sighed.  Vos's existential crisis was averted for now, but what did it really matter?  They were now free to – what?  Wander the vast and ever-shifting landscape for all eternity?  And Primus, it had been bad enough trying to stay motivated when Vos just couldn't speak Neocybex.  What was he going to say to a fragging disembodied _spark_?

He let his shoulders slump, and started walking.  "Looks like we're going this way then.  Not that it matters which way we go.  We'll probably just end up wherever whatever great cosmic entities are out there decide we need to be.  Or the vast and unpredictable will of the universe?  Whatever."  He was rambling.  Normally he would be embarrassed to allow anyone hear him speak in such a frank way, but he somehow doubted that Vos was fit to judge him.  And strangely, though he had no audial receptors to listen with, Vos's spark _did_ seem to be pulsing with a warm contentment.  It must have been responding to the vibrations caused by his voice.  It was kind of . . . sweet, being able to make the boiled down, shapeless essence of his friend happy.  Was that weird?

Tarn would probably chastise him for it.  ' _Communing with the dead is unnatural,'_ perhaps?   ' _A real Decepticon wouldn't care how weird such a thing was,'_ maybe?  He shook his head, carefully stepping around a sinkhole that had appeared in front of him.  Sometimes, it was easier to just assume that Tarn didn't kill guys who broke the rules so much as guys he just personally didn't like.  There were too many rules to keep straight otherwise – and blasphemous as it may have been, Tesarus didn't particularly like the idea of a life lived in constant fear of making some tiny faux pas that resulted in his death.  That sort of thing was for other mechs – mechs who hadn't scored themselves a position with the DJD.

"Besides, we're _all_ dead now!  What are we supposed to do?  _Not_ communicate with each other?  What do ya got to say to that, Tarn?!"  He shook a challenging claw from his waldos to the sky, feeling strangely freed.

Come to think of it, Vos had said he was angry with Tarn, hadn't he?  "Why is that?  I don't get it.  You two always seemed to get along well – better than like, _most_ of us with Tarn, actually.  I think, anyway.  I never could quite understand what you guys were saying, but it was like – like you guys were having actual conversations – based on the number of words, at least.  Maybe I'm wrong?  But the rest of us didn't really talk to Tarn all that much.  Well, in comparison, anyway.  Wow. 

"Are you pissed 'cause we died?  Megatron's the one who killed us, you know.  I know you really liked the guy, but I mean – it's not Tarn's fault we're dead, yeah?" 

  _Yeah!_ his subconscious shouted back to him.  It was probably a bad sign.  But whatever treacherous path his mind had been attempting to take him down was destined to remain unexplored.  He lost his train of thought around the same time the scenery changed again.  He'd stepped into a green lagoon and found himself emerging instead from a pool of lava.  How lucky that he was so big!  His armor was thick – he was able to get out, scorched and sore, but alive nonetheless.  And he was just tall enough to keep Vos from the worst of it.  His spark expanded wide in his hands, flickering weakly, but it ultimately held up.  Tesarus doubted that it would have survived being submerged.

The pool of lava disappeared as soon as he'd passed the obstacle it posed, but he was growing weary of the aimless wandering.  What was the point of it all?  In life, he'd had a very clear purpose – uphold the Decepticon cause, destroy traitors, protect his own.  But out here?  Out where the rules were all turned on their head?  There was nothing for him.

His own spark, deep within his chest phased out – for just a moment.

_No!_   Vos was counting on him!  He couldn't allow himself to give up!  He needed to live (unlive?) in order to keep Vos safe, though from what, he wasn't sure yet.

He was, however, about to find out.

First he heard the shriek, high and eerie, yet rumbling like thunder.  Then came a second and a third, surrounding him – encircling him.  He chalked it up to the weirdness of this world and kept moving.  But the noise didn't disappear, even as the rest of the scenery around him melted and warped, into an empty field, into a burning city, into a white nothingness and a rocky plain.  He never would have admitted it, but he was beginning to grow nervous.

"Hello?" he called out.  It was stupid, yes.   In his long life of torture and mayhem, Tesarus had exposed himself to every sound capable of being produced by the Cybertronian vocalizer.  This was not one of them.  This was horrific, monstrous, some kind of rabid beast, rather than a friendly face.  But he didn't know what else he could do.  He wondered, if he was already dead, could he die again?  What about Vos?

The ground opened up beneath him, dropping him into a field of blue flowers, not unlike the ones on that world he'd died on.  The familiar sight left him feeling ill, left his spark giving a painful lurch; had Vos's spark been more substantial than it was, it would have phased through his momentarily non-existent hands, and crashed to the ground below.  Thank Primus – or whoever, for small mercies.

But Tesarus really didn't like this.  He was a Decepticon, a warrior, a member of the DJD.  He was the toughest of the toughest by virtue of his position alone, and that was to say nothing of his stature.  Tesarus was not a mech used to being frightened, used to feeling pain, feeling weak.  And yet here he was, slowly fading away in an endless field that came _far_ too close to his own grave, trying valiantly to protect himself and his helpless friend as some kind of screaming _things_ closed in around him.  Yes, Tesarus was terrified, and he hated it.

"Hey Vos, now would be a good time to wake up, yeah?  Can you do that for me?  Maybe?"

Vos's spark didn't so much as flicker.  It was useless.  A more pragmatic mech would have tossed it.

. . .

"We'll keep going.  I don't like this place either."  A fool like Tesarus, however, would just start talking to a mindless object and pretend like it was talking back to him.  How pathetic was he?

_Decepticons don't abandon their own._

He kept walking, but this time, the field remained static.  Great.  Whatever ran this place had a sense of irony.   And worse yet, the shrieking seemed to be getting closer.

"What do you think that is, Vos?"

And that was when it struck – faster than thought, a direct blow to the hands, knocking Vos's spark clean away.  Damn, what good was being so big if his reactions were slow?!  This thing had divided them, and was already on its way in to finish what it started, its sharp, white claws reaching for Vos's vulnerable spark. 

Tesarus dove, but he knew there was no way he could catch that – that _thing_ in time.  It was going to – to kill Vos, or obliterate him, or whatever.  He would be alone again, with the blood of one more companion on his hands, one more person he couldn't save.

_Vos_.

Gunshots rang out in the air – once, twice, three times, and the creature fell dead, leaving Vos's spark floating freely in the air above it.  As much as Tesarus longed to run for it, battle protocol dictated that he register any threats around him, and an armed stranger that was powerful enough to take out what appeared to be a legitimate _sparkeater_ definitely qualified as a threat.  He turned to face the newcomer.

"Are you an idiot?  Why are you running around with a free spark?"

That voice!  This was no stranger at all!  And indeed, it was with first relief, then surprise, concern, and relief again, that he looked upon the face of Helex.

"Helex!" he staggered forward, dignity out the window, to throw his arms around his old companion.  As anticipated, Helex was less-than thrilled, shoving at Tesarus with all four arms trying to get him to back off.

"Yes, me.  And do you mind?  We're gonna be drowning in sparkeaters in a few minutes if we don't ditch that naked spark over there.

And that was all it took to get Tesarus back on the defensive.  "That's Vos!"  He backed away, putting himself between Helex and that precious, defenseless spark.

"Vos, is it?"  He raised his gun; the knowledge that it was a former _companion_ that he now aimed it at seemed to have no effect.  "Move."

"Helex?  What the frag do you think you're –"

"This place is crawling in sparkeaters.  And what do you think they're drawn by?  You wanna keep up your shallow excuse of a half-existence?  Ditch the baggage and let's get outta here."

Tesarus took another step back.  "Are you joking?  He's one of us!  Be rational here."

"Rational?  _You're_ the one being irrational.  He faded; he's gone.  He gave up, doesn't want to be here anymore, accepted his death.  There's no undoing that.  Just – let him do his thing; it's what he chose.  You and I can still keep on, so long as we're not bogged down by _him_!"

Helex had gone mad!  Surely, he wasn't in his right mind!  And on a normal day, Tesarus would have put him in his place, charged forward, smacked him around a bit, and they'd be on their way.  But this was different.  They were dead.  And Vos was . . . gone.  What would happen if his spark was destroyed?  Would he cease to exist?  This was all too much to think about.

"How – how do you know all this?" Tesarus asked, barely audible over the sounds of incoming shrieking.

"I've been fighting them for _years_ now!  I think I know how they tick."

Years?  Tesarus staggered backwards again; he could just feel the warmth of Vos's spark at his back, though he dare not turn to grab it.  He had no doubts that Helex would shoot – he was a logical sort of guy, not easily bogged down by morals or friends.  And that was discounting the fact that he'd apparently been here for  . . . "What do you mean by that?  I woke up in this place this morning!  And I found Vos in a box earlier today.  We died _today,_ Helex!  What do you mean you've been fighting for years?"

Helex averted his eyes, staring somewhere into the distance.  He was shivering, a sight Tesarus never thought he would live to see.  He'd dispatched that first sparkeater with ease, but it had only been one.  And though Helex was armed, Tesarus had only his body as a weapon, barring Vos suddenly deciding to manifest a physical form once again. 

"Look," he said.  "This is me asking nice.  Please, just forget about Vos.  If he's sparked out, then there's no going back.  He's a lost cause.  But _you_ don't have to be.  Come on, Tess.  Before they get here.  I don't wanna watch another of my friends die."

Another?

"Vos doesn't count as your friend?"  The words seemed to shock life back into Helex.  And then came the anger.

"Stop arguing with me Tess."

But if nothing else, Tesarus was stubborn.  Helex didn't want to lose another friend?  Good.  Neither did Tesarus.  In fact, if ever he'd had a goal in life, it would have been that.  He'd lost enough friends already. 

It was unlikely that Helex could see the glare Tesarus shot him behind his x-shaped visor, but it didn't matter.  He turned his back on his companion with as much force as he could muster, and grabbed Vos's spark in his hands, holding it close to his chest – where his own spark would have been if the grinder didn't take up most of the space.  In the distance, just over the blue horizon, he could just see the outline of a thousand silvery figures, slithering closer.  His own spark skipped a beat.

"You see them, right?"

"Yeah."

"Then you know it's a lost cause, yeah?"

Tesarus shook his head, turning his back on the creeping horror in the distance to make one final plea.  "You said you don't wanna lose another friend, right?  Well, how's this?  I'm not leaving Vos behind.  So either help him, or you lose _two_."

Helex didn't take long to think over that.  Within seconds he had thrust out one of his smaller hands, plucking Vos's spark from within Tesarus's.  "Fine!  I got it.  But if your stubborn aft gets us killed again . . ." he opened up his smelter, moving to place Vos inside.

"In _there_?!"

A poisonous glare came his way, but Helex didn't let it linger, turning his back on Tesarus and taking off, not bothering to see if he was being followed.  And Tesarus, abated, had no reason to stay behind.  He jogged after his teammate, hoping for an answer.  Hoping for many answers, actually.

"It's not like I'm going to smelt him.  I'm just hoping that maybe – if he's hidden inside another mech, it'll throw off the trail."

"Maybe?"

"Well I don't bloody well know,  now do I?  Just shut up and run.  With any luck we'll phase to another reality and the beasts out there will find something tastier to pursue."

They ran for hours maybe.  Days?  Or even seconds.  Time seemed to pass strangely here; it suddenly didn't seem all that strange that Helex had spent years occupying this realm.  The only real question was whether or not he himself had done so as well?  He supposed the answer to that one could wait.

He'd expected the sparkeaters to be faster than two behemoth-sized industrial vehicles running at a full sprint (which for Tesarus, at least, was still faster than his alt mode), but eventually the sounds of shrieking that chased them began to fade into the distance, until they disappeared altogether.  By the time Tesarus and Helex were finally able to come to a rest, they were in a blank red plane – no ground, no sky.  Tesarus honestly wasn't quite certain how they'd been able to run at all.

His frame was running hot.  It felt nice, familiar, a point of reality in this bizarre plane of existence.  Still, pleasant or not, exhaustion was ruling his actions now.  He collapsed to the lack of ground, bouncing gently in mid-air for a moment before coming to a more solid float.  His vents had all opened wide and were running full-blast, and to his satisfaction, Helex appeared to be in a similar boat.

"I hope you're happy with yourself, you miserable bastard," Helex growled between pants.  "We almost didn't make it out."

"Fuck off, Helex," Tesarus groaned, then thought better of it.  "No, don't actually fuck off.  I didn't mean that."  He slumped forward, sinking slightly in space.  "I don't wanna lose you either."

"How sweet of you."

"Is Vos . . .?"

"Still in here, yeah.  Safe and happy as a disembodied spark could be, I guess."

"Good."

From there, it was a long and awkward moment of silence.  There was much that Tesarus didn't understand, and Helex seemed to be full of answers.  The question was, what did he want to know first?

"Hey Helex?"

"Yeah?"

"You said you've been here for years, so I'm guessing you know a lot about this place."

"I do."

"Then maybe you could explain something for me."

Helex quirked an optic ridge, but made no other protestation.  "Go on."

"You said earlier that Vos had 'sparked out,' and that there was no coming back from it?  It sounded like you know that from experience.  So I guess my question is, what did you mean when you said you didn't want to watch 'another' of your friends die?  That wasn't just what happened to us before, was it?"

A pained look crossed Helex's face, but it was short-lived.  There was no reason for him to argue this time, so he didn't bother.  Instead, he sighed, sinking downwards, until the world around them began to fade to black.  "Get comfy.  It's a bit of a story."


	3. All Things Back to the Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helex has been trapped in the afterlife for years. How did he cope?

The fire was warm on his plating, comforting, a soft light of happiness in the black eternity that they sat in.  Helex had always been partial to fire.  'Crucible,' they'd called him, in another life.  And Crucible he'd been again, until Tesarus had found him, had regifted the name that Megatron had stripped him of, so very many years ago.  He was drawn to the fire, to its heat, its glow.  It had been his sole companion in this hellish scape for far too long now.

To Tesarus, it was merely something to marvel at.

"What the?   _Fire_?  You can make fire?!  How'd you do that?"

Helex shrugged his smaller arms, while his larger stoked the flames with a likewise conjured pole.  "Nothing in this world is permanent.  The trick is to connect with the point in time and space where an object is, and bring it to you."  Tesarus's slack jaw did not inspire much confidence that his message had gotten through.

"Like . . . like subspace?"

"In the broadest sense, I suppose.  But instead of a pocket dimension, I'm pulling things from the past or future."

Tesarus shook his head.  "That doesn't make a lick of sense, Helex."  He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, his gaze transfixed by the flickering flames.  What was he thinking about?  He said he'd only been awake in this place for a day; it was a dangerous time for him.  It always was.

Their deaths had been particularly traumatic, unnatural even, in their nature, exuding betrayal, and the loss of everything they'd ever believed.   And the baggage left unto them carried right on to the afterlife.  But in a place where strength of conviction was the only difference between existence and oblivion, that baggage could be lethal.  It had proven as much for Vos.

But Tesarus seemed remarkably determined, all things considered.  It was admirable.

"But it seems handy.  That's how you got the gun earlier, right?"

"Yeah," Helex confirmed.

"Can you use it to bring us somewhere, like, more corporeal?  This endless nothing is weirding me out."

"Trust me, the nothing is better.  The Sparkeaters prefer actual terrain."  Tesarus was watching him, a look of suspicion in his frown.  He didn't seem to much like that answer.  "Besides," he continued, "I don't got control over where the world spits us out.  I can grab things out of time and space, but I've never been able to move myself through it."

"Okay," said Tesarus, drawing out the word.  "So you got no control over where we go; I can buy that.  This place is weird.  But you said you can conjure up pretty much any object, right?"

Helex shrugged.  "Not sure about _any_ object, but yeah.  Sure."

"Could you conjure up a body for Vos, then?"

"No."  His voice shook as he spoke, despite his best efforts to stay calm.  Crucible wouldn't have faltered; Crucible had killed his emotions.  Helex, however, wasn't quite used to having them again; couldn't keep the same hold on them.  He could only hope that Tesarus wouldn't pry.

Of _course_ Tesarus pried.

"No?  Why not?  Are you being difficult again, or have you tried already?"  He paused, his frame stiffening as realization set in.  "You _have_ tried, haven't you?  You said you'd seen someone 'spark out' before.  Who was it?  Kaon? . . . Tarn?"

~~~

He'd been born from the fire, in his new life, as his old.  He'd awoken in this plane without so much as a scream, while his fresh, insubstantial body melted into existence around his wildly flaring spark.  It hurt, yes – surely this was what it was like for his own victims, condemned to destruction in his own smelter, but Helex reveled in the pain.  It was who he was – flame, death, agony.  It was who he was meant to be.

Dying had been the best thing to ever happen to him.

Did that sound twisted?  Vos had screamed when Megatron ripped into him, split his frame with the power of his mind.  Helex could still smell the entrails that had splattered him, and the others.  And it had been horrifying.  Tarn had built up their team, given them a purpose, given them a reason to live, and _people_ to live for.  And then it had all been turned on its head, and Megatron had eradicated them, like they had been the same as the unclean ones he had long ordered them against.

And he'd watched his friends die.  They'd lost Kaon first – before, to Tarn's increasing instability.  And then Vos.  It was fine.  They were small things, weak things; he mourned them, yes, but he couldn't deny the strange satisfaction he felt deep within his core at watching their demise.

_All things back to the fire._

He's screamed too, when Megatron's antimatter ripped into him.  It hurt – in the best way, it hurt.  Helex had been confused, for so long.  Life didn't make any sense.  A righteous cause had been destroyed, a glorious leader had been domesticated, small, fragile loved ones, whom he'd long been protective of, had perished; the world had turned upside down.  Death was easier.

_All things back to the fire._

He didn't have to think in this place.  In fact, it was better if he didn't.  Thinking was apt to send him philosophizing, dissecting his own thoughts and actions in a life that had long since grown irrelevant.  And when that happened, so too came oblivion – cold, dark oblivion.  Nothing was scarier.

_Hold on to the fire._

He was Crucible now, as he had once been, at his birth, _and_ at his death.  'Helex' was just an intermediate name; 'Helex' was nothing.  'Helex' was a monster, and best left dead and forgotten.   'Crucible' was the superior creature – cold, heartless, empty.

With that in mind, un-life became easier for him.  He didn't have to think about anything, nor worry about where he was going or what he would do there; all he needed to focus on was survival.  It wasn't easy in this place.  When the scenery wasn't trying to shift him into environmental hazards, the Sparkeaters were trying to eat him.  His first encounter with one had been terrifying in a way that a mech of Crucible's size and power had never experienced in life.

It had been wandering aimlessly through a desert he'd found himself in.  At first, it had puzzled him.  He'd long since banished the concept of Sparkeaters to myth and legend, but this creature certainly matched the mental image.  Though he later found them to come in all shapes and sizes, _this_ one exceeded even _him_ in height, if not bulk.  It's frame was wiry, crumbling and skeletal, it's face, gaunt, and its optics empty, leaking a black ooze – they reminded him of Kaon's.  

And then, it had turned on him.

It had been a mistake to try and fight it.  Course, grimy cables had wrapped around his arms, restraining them with a supernatural power.  Four claws, each the size of Crucible's face dug into the cover of his smelter, prying it apart by force, until the glass shattered, and _frag_ that hurt.

Those hideous hands dove into his molten chest, unbothered by the heat, digging, digging, trying to find the spark beneath.  But it couldn't quite get a lock on a spark more well-protected than most.  Not that it gave up there.

Crucible always _had_ had an oral fixation.

But while Crucible had always enjoyed crushing the helms of his enemies between his teeth, he had nothing on this creature.  It unhinged the jaw from its hollow face, and, in what must have been some sort of ironic justice for his victims, latched onto Crucible's head.  But it didn't press.  Instead, a sharp, tongue shot out, tasting Crucible's face, feeling its way to his mouth, and forcing itself in.  And _that_ was where the terror increased one hundredfold.

His frame fell slack, toppling over backwards beneath the creature's scant weight, paralyzed by either a mystical force, or the fact that his spark had just been dislodged from its casing and had somehow forced its way past several layers of internal plating, and up through his intake pipe, towards the monstrous maw that was latched onto him.

A mech like him shouldn't have been scared.  He'd been through worse.  He'd _died_ at the hands of a mech he'd once worshipped even.  And yet somehow, being here, now, the thought of losing his spark to this creature's gluttony, of the impending oblivion that awaited him?  That was scarier than anything.

And it was probably deserved.  It was _definitely_ deserved.  The only way it could have been _more_ deserved was if this Sparkeater was the wayward soul of one of his victims.

But he didn't want to go.

And then, he didn't have to.

He felt the cannonfire against his plating, warm like fire.  The entire upper body of the Sparkeater was dissolved, and it collapsed to the ground at his side, before crumbling to dust, leaving Crucible, slowly recovering from his paralysis, to stare blankly up at the sky, hoping to see the face of his savior.

His savior didn't step into his limited field of sight, but he _did_ speak.

"Helex?"

How strange.  It _sounded_ like Tarn.  The voice had the right timbre, depth, warmth, not to mention the pleasant tingling sensation it left in his spark – it wasn't exactly an easy voice to imitate, and that was ignoring the fact that it called him by a long-dead name.  But it couldn't have been.  Tarn never could have sounded so _weak._

He heard the shifting of gears, followed by a heavy clang, as though his mysterious savior had toppled to the ground, rather than come over to enlighten him with the mystery of his identity.

"Are you really here?  You can't be real.  You can't be here.  This is Hell.  I am in Hell, and my friends are not supposed to be here.  That is too much of a kindness.  I cannot have  kindness.  Only suffering.  This place is suffering, not kindness, and so, you can't be here, and so you must be fake."

The world was beginning to shift.  He was going to lose this – this Tarn, or Tarn imposter, or whatever he was, and Crucible (Helex?) wasn't sure he was quite ready for that.  Not yet.

"I'm real," he groaned, "or at least, I think I am.  Please don't leave.  I can feel myself losing you, and I don't really want that, so do you think you could . . . well, at least come over here, so I can see you?"

But it was too late.  Tarn was already gone.

It was perhaps his determination that brought the feeling back to his limbs so quickly.  He couldn't quite make it all the way to his feet yet, but he _could_ crawl, using his massive arms to drag him across the desert in the direction he'd heard his mystery mech.

And that was how he found out there was an order to the way the world worked.  The desert transformed into a barren wasteland – the ruins of Iacon, if memory served, and there, curled up in an offensively pathetic ball of limbs and treads and cannons, was Tarn.

No.

This wasn't right.  This _couldn't_ have been Tarn.  Tarn was confident, powerful, sadistic, cultured, and magnificent, and suave, and as far away from the miserable little _thing_ that cowered before him as one could possibly get.

"Tarn?"

"N-no!" that miserable creature hissed.  "Not Tarn, Glitch.  'Glitch' is what he called me, Glitch is what I am, what I deserve, I –"

"Tarn, what's wrong with you?" Helex crawled closer.  Yes, that was right.  He was Helex.  When he was with Tarn, he was Helex.   _Helex._ "This isn't like you at all."

"It's Glitch!  Glitch!" he snapped, the sound rolling over Helex's spark like a stab wound.  His arms gave out, leaving him collapsing face-first into the rusty earth, but Tarn ( _Glitch_ ) gave no indication that he'd seen it.  "He was right.  I was a fool to stand up to him – he was _right_!  My life has been a lie.  I am a lie, everything I am – everything I did was for nothing!   _NOTHING!_ "

Helex chanced a glance up just in time to see Tarn's frame flicker.  He didn't even seem to notice, so wrapped up was he in the pity parade.  Would he disappear altogether if it happened again?  Helex didn't want that!  He'd been here so long, just surviving, and Tarn had always given him something to live for.  He couldn't allow him to fall into oblivion!

"Ta – Glitch," he growled, finding the strength to crawl forward again.  "Stop talking like that – you're disappearing."

"It was for nothing.  I lost everyone I cared about.  I – I _killed_ Kaon, all for my idiotic, misguided –"

"Glitch!"  Helex was close now, close enough to reach out and grab Tarn's hand, which had been firmly clutching his knee, and squeeze tightly.  For the first time, Tarn looked up.

He didn't have his mask.  It was the first time Helex had seen him without it.  The face below was brutally disfigured – delicate facial plating warped outwards, burned and crumbling, the rest was scratched, fractured – Helex couldn't tell what the original color was supposed to be.  But his eyes?  They remained, glowing brightly in his agony.

Tarn had lost his mind.  He'd long been losing it, ever since Megatron's betrayal, or maybe even before that.  After all, it could be said that nobody could keep their sanity while leading a torture brigade, and Helex was vaguely aware of Tarn's history as an empurata victim, which couldn't have helped.  But dying?  Least of all in the way they'd gone out?  It must have been the final straw.  He was scarcely holding on to his grasp on reality.  What was it he saw when he looked into Helex's eyes?

"Fire."

"Sorry, what?"

"You are . . . you are Crucible.  That is what he called you.  That is what you are now.  Crucible."  He laughed, a broken, hollow sound.  " _Cities_ , Helex.  We named ourselves after cities.  How arrogant _were_ we?  And _I_?  I was the worst of all!  I dared take the name of Megatron's homeland.  What a sycophantic fool I was!"

"I liked being Helex," he tried, hoping that he didn't make the situation worse.  Helex was _good._ Well, not good, per say.  But he was a lively fellow, at least – more fun to be than Crucible, anyway.  But Tarn didn't seem to notice.

"Look at me!  A pathetic, simpering idiot!  I _claimed_ to be the ultimate definition of a Decepticon, even more so than Megatron himself!  I _dared_ appoint myself as judge over the unworthy.  I made myself into a monster, because I thought it was what he would have wanted, because I thought it's what he would have wanted, because I _thought_ it's what he would have wanted – the real him – not the pathetic protoform that wore his frame – no.  No, he was no coward.  Look at me!  I got the lot of you _murdered_ because I thought him a coward – because I chose to blaspheme, because I chose to denounce his name!

"It was the most grievous of sins!   _He_ was my god, and I _denounced_ him!  He changed the path, and I did not follow.  I thought myself superior to him.  I am a fool!  I am a fool!"

He was fading again.  This time, Helex grabbed onto his other hand, and when that didn't work, he pulled him in close, towards the heat that emanated from within him.  It was probably as close to an embrace as Helex would allow himself to get.

"Fire," he muttered again, with a laugh.  "You were always a monster too, weren't you.  The worst of us even, weren't you?"

Helex pulled Tarn away, just enough to look into his eyes.  "What?"

"Yes, I always admired it – that thing you did, with the brain modules.  It was brutal.  It was beautiful.  It was _monstrous._ "

"Yes?"  Helex wasn't sure whether this was a compliment or a complaint.  It was best to go the neutral route.  He may have been twice Tarn's size, may have had him in a very vulnerable position, but that meant nothing.  He was under no illusions that Tarn was at his mercy – that Tarn couldn't destroy his spark in an instant.  What would happen to him, were his spark to implode in this realm?  Oblivion?

"Yes," Tarn agreed, frame solidifying around his spark.  For now, at least.  Primus, how was Helex supposed to fix this?  "All of you, you were beautiful.  You were the best of the best.  My shining specimens.  You were perfection, I would have settled for nothing less."

"Err, thank you."

"And then I killed you."  The flicker was more powerful this time, lasted longer; Helex could actually _feel_ Tarn slip through his fingertips, melting to the ground below.  But he stabilized once again, collapsed back on his haunches with a lost look on his scarred face.

"Hel – _Crucible,_ " he corrected, gazing absently across the wasteland.  "What's become of us?  What is this place?"

"Hmm?  You don't know?"

" _Crucible_ ," he said, forced, as though he'd nearly slipped again.  "Does it look to you that I am of solid mind at the moment?"

"No," though admittedly, he was already looking much more like his old self.  Perhaps the severity of that last flicker had shocked his systems into reboot?

"Then perhaps you could do me a _favor_ , and inform me as to the status of our current situation?"

"Y-yeah.  Yeah, I can do that."  Did he not know?  It _had_ been years since their shocking demise.  Perhaps he'd just driven himself mad in the meantime.  Perhaps he just needed another jolt to his memory.

"We're dead," Helex explained, "and this is the . . . I don't know, the afterlife maybe?  I've been wandering around on my own, kind of getting to know the lay of the land, the way things work, yeah?  Everything here seems to be held in a fragile state of balance; the slightest moment of doubt can send you spiraling to oblivion.  Guess you're lucky I got to you when I did, eh?"

Tarn said nothing in response.  Evidently, he wanted to know more.  Okay then, Helex had more.

"Well, so yeah.  Anyway, it looks like there's legitimate _Sparkeaters_ running around too, and they're _strong_ , Ta – _Glitch._ "  Nice save.  Tarn had stiffened at the slip up, but the tension drained away once the danger of hearing that cursed name had passed.  "Thanks for saving me back there, by the way.  I don't know what woulda happened to me if you hadn't blown that thing into atoms – provided we're still made up of atoms.  I don't even know anymore.  Heh, I need to find me a gun, is what I need.  Maybe there's something around here?"  They _were_ in some long-forgotten battlefield in Iacon; a few remnants wouldn't be completely beyond the realm of possibility.

"You sound like you've been here awhile," Tarn commented at last, tone unreadable.  "You're quite familiar with this place."

"Well yeah," Helex nodded.  "It's been _years_ since we . . . er, passed on."  Tarn had tensed up again.  Frag it all!  He'd just _had_ to go and bring that up!

But it wasn't the allusion to the touchy subject that had Tarn upset this time.

" _Years_?!"

"Yes?" Helex confirmed, already feeling the confusion setting in.  What was so hard to grasp about the concept?  Yeah, it _was_ a little difficult to get a feel for the passing of the days in this kind of place, but he'd been keeping track – set up his chronometer, kept track of every sleep cycle.  Even if actual years hadn't passed, it sure has hell felt like it.

"It hasn't been years.  Not for me.  It just happened, Crucible.  I can – I can still feel his _hands_ on me!"  And he was fading again.  Bad subject; bad Helex.  New subject!  New subject!

"Weird."

Smoothe.  But it did the trick.  Tarn's frame solidified in an instant, his face jerking upwards to fix Helex with a most affronted stare.   _Note to self: the best way to break through to Tarn when he's freaking is to undermine his dramatic sensibilities._

" _Weird_?  Is that really _all_ you have to say about it?  After what happened?!  After what I condemned the lot of you to?"

Helex shrugged.  "Well, I mean," he said, easing his way around the dangerous aspects of those questions, "I've been here for years, but it seems like you just arrived.  I guess that makes sense in a way.  I don't think you woulda lasted long here acting the way you were."  Tarn made to speak, but Helex didn't let him.  He didn't think he could stomach a third meltdown.  "But I think we can help each other."

The old Tarn would have been furious at the interruption, and that wasn't to say that the new one was happy.  But he did nothing to lash out at Helex – didn't drag him down by the tongue, bash his helm in, didn't peel the rubber from his treads in a long, painful strip, nor shatter the glass of his smelter.  He simply sat there, staring, with an irritated glare.

Helex reveled in it.

"You got the guns, I got the knowledge.  We take care of each other, watch each other's backs.  Just like old times!  What do ya say, Ta – Glitch?"  Primus, the name change was going to take a lot of getting used to.

Tarn seemed to think it over for a long moment, his red optics boring a hole into the ground at his feet.  But at last, he seemed to come to a decision.  He took his sweet time in standing up, his movements graceful, regal, proud – now _there_ was the Tarn that Helex knew!  And when he turned to face Helex, it was no longer with that haunted, pitiful expression he'd been wearing, but with confident eyes, and just the hint of a smile.  For the first time since their meeting, Helex felt like Tarn might have what it took to survive this hellscape.

"Very well.  Let's do this."

~~~

For months, they remained at each other's sides – Glitch and Crucible.  Helex personally didn't feel like much of a 'Crucible' anymore, but Glitch tended to suffer a major breakdown at any mention of the DJD, so Helex played along.  And disputes over preferred names aside, the afterlife wasn't so terrible.  It was nice having someone to talk to again, even if it _was_ Tarn.  Glitch.  Whatever.

He liked Glitch, had been a willing and eager follower of his doctrine, but the thing about Glitch was, he liked to hear himself speak.  He'd always maintained the image of some suave, cultured gentlemech, and when not on one of his downswings, he continued to project the image with all of his might.  Helex was all too eager to play along, even though he despised the personality.

He didn't know much about Glitch's past.  He'd been a victim of Empurata, and had attended Shockwave's academy for freaks at some point, but otherwise?  His original identity, caste, whether he'd been rich or poor?  Helex knew none of that.  But if he had to guess, he'd peg Glitch as a try hard who, deep down, was trying _very_ hard to appear to be something he wasn't.  And in the process, was alienating the very sort of mech the Decepticons claimed to be championing for.

Helex didn't give a shit about art and music.  He liked to work hard, fight hard, chew on some brain modules, and call it good.  Call him simple, but at least he was honest.  Needless to say, they were an odd pair.

There were no more encounters with Sparkeaters in that time.  They traveled through reality after reality after reality, witnessing all manner of places – some from their memories, but most were of places they'd never seen, never could have imagined.  Many didn't even properly obey the laws of physics.  And though their own personalities did not mesh nearly as well when it was just the two of them, their goals remained the same as ever.

They were going to find Vos and Tesarus.  Logically, they needed to be in this place too.  And maybe even Kaon, if Glitch was up for it.  Honestly, Helex didn't know if he would be.  Tesarus and Vos and Helex had all been led to their deaths alongside Tarn, but Kaon had been directly killed by him.  All as part of some pissing match with Overlord, no less.  Helex wasn't entirely convinced that Glitch would be able to make it through an encounter with the one he'd hurt the most without disappearing from existence altogether.

And that was _if_ Kaon, or even the others, were in this place at all.  The nature of the world was still such a mystery to them, and one that would likely remain unsolved.  This wasn't some quest.  There weren't clues lying around to explain the meaning of everything.  It just was.  Whether the afterlife, or some strange dimension, they did not know.  And they were not so foolish to believe they could escape.

And even if they _could_ , what was the point?  There was no place left for them in the world they'd fled from.  It was better that they remain here.  Maybe it was their fate to remain here?  Maybe it was their punishment?

But the months they spent together, while not nearly long enough, were more than Helex could have hoped for.

It was clear that Glitch had been irreparably traumatized by his death at Megatron's hands.  Some days, he was perfectly fine, the shining representation of his old self, but most, he couldn't manage.  Even at his best, there was always some remnant of his worst, hiding just beneath the surface, ready to claim him.  Hardly a day went by without a close call of some kind, without the threat of losing Glitch altogether.  Helex could try his hardest, but there was no magical cure to Glitch's ailment; all they could do was fight.  And in this world where belief and conviction were everything, it was only a matter of time before fighting would no longer be good enough.

Helex woke up on a frozen tundra, reminiscent of their base at Delphi, though they had fallen asleep in a swamp.  Glitch was nowhere to be found.

"Glitch?" he called out.  "Glitch, where'd you go?"  The panic was welling up within him.  He sprang to his feet as fast as he could manage.  Where would he go?  Glitch had no reason to leave him!  And he was too unwell to be left alone.  He was going to die.  Or he would phase out of synch with Helex, and he would never find him again.  Frag!  This was bad.

"Glitch!" he tried again, racing onwards.  In the distance, he could see an outpost, scaled to their race, a massive red x barring its door.  This area didn't just _look_ like Delphi.

Sure enough, standing before the door, staring up blank-faced, was Glitch.  "This was me," he muttered.

"Err, yeah," Helex responded, cautiously.  "The Autobot outpost on Delphi.  But we didn't really come here.  Our base is back _this_ way.  Or it should be."  He grabbed Glitch's hand.  "Come on!  Let's go see if it's there."

"No."

The sound shook Helex down to his spark; he stumbled backwards, barely maintaining his footing.  Glitch easily wrenched his hand from Helex's slackened grip.

"Glitch?"

"This – I know this place.  I want to look inside."

There was no way _that_ could end well.  Helex couldn't let him do it!  "I don't think we should.  You're just gonna be upset by whatever it is you find.  Come on, Glitch.  Let's get outta here."

"I _want_ to look _inside_."

This time, the sound was enough to bring Helex to his knees.  This was too much.  He was helpless to stop Glitch once he set his mind on something.

Glitch didn't bother to help him up.  Instead, he simply raised his cannons, blew a hole in the side of the outpost, and wandered in.  It was up to Helex to follow.

They were changing venues; Helex fully-expected the outpost to lead to the moon, or an underground tunnel, or a field of lava, but no.  As best as Helex could tell, the hole in the wall of the outpost merely led to the inside of the outpost, humble though it was.  He somehow doubted the real deal was quite this small.  But it was enough to prove upsetting.

The room was crammed to the brim with medical slabs, and on them, row after row of lifeless husks, their empty frames gasping frantically as they'd tried to escape their last moments.  And there, in the middle of it all, staring down at one frame in particular (was that the Autobot jet medic?), stood Glitch.  He wore an unreadable look on his face, which had Helex on edge.  Maybe he shouldn't have followed?

"Look at it, Crucible.  Isn't it beautiful?"

"Uh, sure."

"This is our doing.  All of this death is because of _us_."  He gave a manic chuckle, spreading his arms wide, as though showing off a great work of art.  But it was just a bunch of dead bodies.  Not even particularly gruesome dead bodies.

"I thought they died of some plague, or whatever.  Rust.  Nasty stuff."

"For me," Glitch corrected.  "They were killed for _my_ benefit.  So I could get my transformation fix.  All of those lives, enemy lives true, but lives nonetheless, wasted to feed my addiction."

"Glitch, are you okay?  That sounds kind of like something an Autobot would say."  He regretted it the moment it had slipped from his mouth.  Glitch had never taken kindly to judgments on his behavior in life.  And that was before he'd gone off the walls mad.

But he scarcely seemed to notice.  "Autobots, yes.  The enemy.  The face of our oppression.  But Megatron was right, wasn't he?  They were more than that."

"Glitch, you're uh, you're starting to scare me.  Can we please just leave?"

Glitch ignored him in favor of his deranged monologue.  "They were our neighbors, our _friends_.  I went to school with these mechs.  Worked with them.  Laughed with them.  Cried.  Fought.  I _cared_ about them.

"And then I read _Towards Peace._  It changed my life.  Megatron – he was so _inspired_.  He was the kind of leader I wanted to follow.  I worshipped him.  I turned on my _friends_ all so I could follow his increasingly twisted ideologies.  The word 'Autobot' became profanity, and those who displayed any similarities were infidels.  And to see our own kind defile our great cause with their weakness?  I had no choice but to cleanse them.

"I – Primus, I lost my way."  He collapsed to the ground, and all around, the medical slabs vanished, though the room itself was slower to fade.  "Megatron was right.  I am nothing.  Just some stupid, obsessed little freak with a vendetta, hiding behind twin cannons and a scary superpower.  I'm a fraud.  I am nothing!"

At great personal risk, Helex moved in closer, offering a nervous hand to lay on Glitch's shoulder.  Glitch didn't shake it off, but he didn't acknowledge it either.  He continued right on having his nervous breakdown.

"Crucible, I know why we're here!  I've figured it out!"

Helex doubted that.  He'd already considered every possibility he could imagine as to what this place was, and why they were there.  But while many of his theories had some merit, none could be definitively proven.  And he didn't see anything in this room to change that.  But Glitch seemed convinced.

"This is Hell.  Megatron has sent us to Hell.  This world is nothing – a haphazard mish mash of memories, and instances, and places that we've never seen, and places that couldn't possibly exist, constantly in motion, constantly changing.  Sparkeaters roam the wastes, waiting to devour us.  We can take matter from where there was no matter.  Time doesn't exist.  Space doesn't exist.  It's a world in flux.  In fact, everything about it is in a constant state of change . . . except for us."

Helex thought that over for a moment.  “I - I don’t know.  I think . . . I feel like I’ve changed since coming here.”  Had he?  Surely he had!  He’d learned plenty.  He’d come to accept his own failings in life.  He wasn’t the same mech he’d been at his death, right?  “And I think you have too, Glitch.”

"No,” he snapped.  “I haven’t.  I haven’t changed at all.  We don't get to be part of existence anymore, Crucible.  Growth is for the living.  All we can do is wander aimlessly through this wasteland, with no purpose but to keep existing.  I’m tired of it.  What is the _point_ of it but to suffer?  We’re _dead_ , Crucible.  The dead don’t continue on.  They just . . . stop.”

His frame flickered out for a long moment – it was only Helex’s hand squeezing his shoulder that brought him back.  “Glitch, stop this!  Okay, maybe we’re not _changing_ , exactly, but it’s not like we’re not doing _anything_ , right?  We’re still here, we’re still together.  We can make a purpose, or – I don’t know.  I don’t know what it is you need to hear from me, but I want to keep on existing, and I _want_ you to keep existing too!  

“I hated being here on my own.  I was no one.  Just an empty shell struggling to cling to the spark of life, but you – you’ve given me a purpose Glitch, _Tarn!_ ”  He flinched at the sound of his old name.

“Don’t use that name.  That was the name of a fool.”

“ _Tarn_!  You’re Tarn.  You never stopped being Tarn!  And I’m Helex!  When I’m with you, I’m Helex!  Helex is _alive_!  Helex is a mech with fire, who can feel!  I wasn’t much of anything at all before I met you.  You gave me fire.  You made me Helex!  You can’t just flush those personalities away because you made a mistake.”

“My life was a mistake.”

“So what?  That doesn’t mean you have to stop being who you are.  Megatron has no right to decide who we are, or who we were!  Come _on_ Tarn!  You have to stay here.  Please, don’t –”

“I can’t.  I don’t want to.  I don’t _deserve_ to.  None of us do.  Just give up, Crucible.”

“ _Helex_!”

“Give up.  Accept that we were wrong.  Accept your death.  It’s what I’ve done.”

He faded again, but this time, he did not come back.  Helex fell forward, catching himself before he hit Tarn’s newly-disembodied spark.  

_No_!

He was alone again.  It had been inevitable.  Tarn simply hadn’t been strong enough to survive in a world like this.  How strange a sentiment was _that_?  Tarn had always been the strongest!  He’d effortlessly kept even behemoth brutes like Helex and Tesarus in line.  And yet, Helex was still here, and Tarn was not.

_He didn’t want to go back._

He couldn’t be Crucible again.  He didn’t want to pass the years in a mindless haze, doing what needed to be done to keep on going.  His life had begun like that – factory work.  Day after day, the same old mind-numbing, back breaking, soulless _work_.  There was no fire.  There was no life.  There was only him – an empty, industrial-sized smelter.  

And again, there would only be him.  Unless he could bring Tarn back!

He stared at the spark that floated before him, mesmerized.  Maybe there was a way to save him?  If he could just find a way to make a spark believe in its own existence . . . did that even make sense?  Did a spark have consciousness?  He’d never really been a disembodied spark before; he had no idea how it worked.

But what harm could it be to try?  

He reached out, wrapping his massive fingers around Tarn’s lifeforce, carrying it in the palm of his hand.  Maybe this world _was_ Hell; maybe it wasn’t.  Maybe somewhere, in this endless mindscape of disconnected scenes, he could find a way to bring back Tarn – and not just the broken shell of the mech he used to be, but proud, powerful _Tarn_ , leader of the DJD.  

He just had to keep going.

~~~

Helex had tried everything he could think of to fix Tarn's lack of a body.  He spoke to him, kept him close – at one point, he'd even tried to meld him with his own spark, though that didn't take.  He'd thought pulling Tarn's own frame from the past had been an inspired idea, and he'd done it, yes – if only for a moment.  It crumble to dust, seconds after its arrival.  Maybe it had been defective?  Or an accident.

Helex tried again.  And again and again, and he even tried pulling other items, to see if there was some error in the way he was working.  But he was doing everything right.  He was doing everything right, and _still_ , Tarn wouldn't come back to him.  Eventually, Helex had no choice but to give up.  There were only so many times he could watch the destruction of his friend play out before it got to him.

And that left a clueless, and increasingly distressed Helex, travelling the land with the disembodied spark of Tarn once more.

They didn’t even last the week.

On the first night, he heard the screaming.  Helex was a member of the DJD; he’d heard his own fair share of screaming in his time, but no amount of frantic pleas, or dying wails, or terrified broken cries could compare to this haunting, alien sound.  It came from all sides.  And always, no matter where he ran to, it kept getting closer.

Sparkeaters.  He was certain it was the Sparkeaters.  He’d heard similar sounds in his brief encounters with the creatures.  But never had they sounded so desperate, so _hungry_.  They could sense the spark he carried with him, and they were closing in.

And then one day, they caught up.

Helex was prepared this time.  He knew how to summon weapons.  He had cannons, blasters, blades – he could fight.   _He could fight!_

But fight though he tried, he was a single mech, and the Sparkeaters?  They were no longer the lone hunter, but a frenzied pack.  Helex couldn’t fight them all off!  He tried.   _Primus_ , he tried.

With the flash of a photon rifle, he took down one, two, six Sparkeaters, but more came to fill their place.  At close range, he tried blades, he tried hand-to-hand, but they were all around him, grabbing, not at him, but at Tarn’s free-floating spark.  Their sharp claws dug into his frame as they climbed over him, as they pushed and shoved and struck, all in an effort to get the prize.  There was no fighting them.  There was no winning.  And the moment they had Tarn, Helex had little doubt they’d come for him.

_He didn’t want to die._

Helex didn’t want to be alone.  He didn’t want to be Crucible again.  He wanted the fire, the fire he’d always been drawn to, the fire he loved.  He wanted Tarn, he wanted life, he _wanted_.  But he couldn’t have it all.  It was either a continued existence in solitude, or Tarn and oblivion.

There was only one choice.

He released Tarn’s spark, shoving it as far away as he could manage with a swarm of Sparkeaters crawling over him.  They leapt for the spark, and he flung the remaining stragglers from his frame, before breaking out into a full-on run.  He had to get away.  He couldn’t watch.  He couldn’t wait.  He couldn’t stay.

It was time to be Crucible again.

~~~

“I’d tried to protect him.  I’d tried everything I knew, but I _couldn’t_ save him.  There was no conjuring a body.  There was no bringing him back.  And now there never will be.  Tarn is somewhere out there, in the belly of a Sparkeater, or wherever one goes after that.  And me?  I’ve been alone ever since.  Just . . . wandering.  I don’t know why I keep doing it.  I don’t have any goals, except to keep on going.”  He laughed, bitterly.  “What kind of existence is _that_?”

He chanced a look at Tesarus’s face – slack-jawed and horrified, just as expected.  It really was good to see such reaction, to see life in another bot.  He’d missed it so much.

“I – I’m sorry, Helex.  I didn’t realize.”

“Yeah?  Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?  We’re here, and he’s not.  No sense getting sad about it.  Pit, it’s better not to.  Get too mopey and it might happen to you too.”  He didn’t know if _that_ was true, but it was best not to chance it.  “But you get it now, right?  It’s best if we just let Vos go.  There’s no bringing him back.  And if he’s out, then the Sparkeaters will come.”

“I don’t hear them now,” Tesarus noted, defiantly.  He wasn’t wrong, but the feeling of foreboding hung over Helex nonetheless.

“We’re in the void right now.  But it won’t last forever.  They’ll come.  They’ll sense his spark, and they’ll come.  We’re better off if we just get rid of him, and keep going with the two of us.”

But Tesarus was nothing if not defiant.  He shook his head.  “I already told you, if he goes, so do I.  I’m not gonna let him . . . stop existing.  I’m not gonna lose him.”  He sat up straighter, the hint of a smile on his lips.  “I think – I think we can save him!  I know you’ve been here a long time, but there’s still a lot of mysteries to explore in this place, yeah?  And you weren’t even with Tarn all that long after _he_ sparked out.  And Vos always was more reasonable than Tarn.

“We can do it!  We can find a way to fix him.  And who knows?  I can’t imagine getting eaten by a Sparkeater is the end, yeah?  Maybe Tarn is still out there somewhere?  Maybe we can bring him back.  Maybe bringing Tarn back is the _key_ to bringing Vos back?”

Helex sighed, tilting his head.  “I don’t follow.”

“Well,” Tesarus began.  “Vos was angry at Tarn – he was saying something about it a bit before he – er – sparked out.  Maybe if we get Tarn back here, it’ll bring Vos around.”

Helex thought it over for scarcely two seconds before dismissing it outright.  “Tess, you’re full of hot slag.”

Tesarus tensed at that, leaning forward with a defensive glare.  “And you’re just a perpetual downer.  Come _on_ Helex.  You’ve been here so long, you’re probably just used to being sad and lonely.  But it doesn’t gotta be that way.  And experience tells me it’s better if it’s not.  This place runs on belief or some scrap, right?”

Helex rolled his eyes.  Had Tesarus always been such a naive sap?  Or had dying made him into a bigger loser than before?  “Yeah, sure.”

Tesarus took Helex’s lack of enthusiasm in stride, though it seemed he was likewise done trying to convince him to look on the bright side.  Though that wasn’t to say he was done with the conversation altogether.  He stared at the fire for a long moment, before speaking up again, more hesitant this time.

“Helex, you’ve been here for years, you said.”

“Yes,” he sighed, “several times now.  What is your point?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen Kaon in all that time?”

Kaon?  It had been so long since he’d heard the name, since he’d even spared a thought for their fifth member.  He hadn’t so much as considered trying to find him since Tarn sparked out.

“No.  It’s just been me.  Though honestly,” he paused, giving the idea further consideration, “I’m not even sure he would be here.  I’ve been here a long time, yeah, but I still don’t know what this place is, or how it really works.  For all I know, we’re here specifically ‘cuz of that shit with Megatron and the antimatter.  Kaon wouldn’t be here at all, if that was the case.  Pit, I almost hope he’s not.  Maybe he wound up somewhere better?”

“Maybe,” Tesarus agreed, but there was an obnoxiously optimistic edge to his voice that had Helex preemptively groaning.  “Or maybe not.  Maybe this is just the afterlife.  Maybe we got a chance at finding him out there in all this nothing.  Maybe he hasn’t even woken up yet, like me and Vos.”

“Or maybe you’re reaching for answers that don’t exist.  Maybe you’ll be less disappointed if you don’t get your hopes up.”

Tesarus frowned again.  “Look, I’m just saying that – well, actually _you_ were saying that you don’t really know why you’re still trying to survive, other than for the sake of existing.  I was thinking that, maybe if we had some kind of _goal_ we were working towards, it would give us, y’know, more of a reason to live.  Don’t you think?”

Maybe Tesarus could come up with a good idea from time to time.  “Well, I guess you’re not _wrong_.  But –”

“But nothing.  I don’t care if it _is_ impossible.  We don’t know how or _if_ we can bring Vos or Tarn back, and we don’t know if Kaon is even here, but if we give up before we begin, then we’re destined to lose, yeah?  And what’s the point in living like that?”

Another good point, Helex conceded.  “Okay, so we reach for impossible goals.  Okay.  I mean, Tarn and I were sorta doing that before, and y'know, nothing  came of it.  And you haven’t even said _how_ we’re gonna do that, but whatever.  I’ll bite.”

Tesarus shrugged.  “Okay, so I don’t know how we’re gonna do it either, but it doesn’t matter right now.  We’ll figure it out.  We just gotta try.  We gotta want it, okay?  No losing hope; no sparking out.  Just you and me and Vos here,” he pointed at Helex’s smelter, “scouring the world for any sign of Kaon.  I think between the three of us, we can find him – if he’s, y’know here.  And if he isn’t, maybe we’ll find the answer to one of our other problems along the way.

“So, what do you say?”

Helex thought it was ill-conceived and not incredibly helpful, but he also acknowledged that it was far better than whatever it was he had been doing before.  Tesarus was just the bot he’d needed to find.  Tesarus still had the spark of life in him, optimism and hope.  Tesarus had the _fire_ that Helex had long been starved of.  When the alternative was being Crucible, being alone, there really was no choice.

_All things back to the fire._

“I think you’re an optimistic idiot,” he smirked, prompting another disgruntled growl from Tesarus.  Helex laughed at the predictable reaction; he was feeling more alive already.  “But I’m game for it.  You win Tess.  Let’s go find Kaon.”

 


	4. Drifting Memories, Burning Hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is it like to spark out? Vos finds out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To ease confusion, the Primal Vernacular will now be denoted with twin greater-than/less-than signs instead of italics.

_Primus, spare my spark._

Pain came first – the pain of his body being systematically torn to shreds from the inside out, through a means and manner that defied the laws of nature.  His consciousness had been scattered between hundreds of tiny pieces – bits of frame, internal mechanisms, fuel, every bit of him that had been splattered into nothingness in that final attack.  It was maddening to be spread so thinly, to see the emptiness of the void from each and every possible angle, to hear the vast nothing in surround sound that stretched onwards for miles, to feel . . . to feel the remains of the mech that had once been Forestock, no, Vos, broken, tattered, split and fractured, dragged back to his core, only to be torn to pieces, again and again, trapped in an endless cycle of his own final moments.

This was . . . was he dead?

Yes.

Megatron had killed him.  The dream was dead.  Now, there was only this.  This torture.  This hell.  This eternity of agony for a lifetime of sin.  But despite the unfamiliar sensations, he couldn’t help but feel that he had been here before.  That didn’t make sense.  You could only die _once_ , right?

How long had he been here, in this agonizing emptiness?  Perhaps he had only just died?  He could still feel the terrifying burn as his body was ripped to shreds by Megatron, his lord and master, his reason for being.  But somehow, the scattered pieces of his consciousness were certain that he had been dead for awhile - that he had played this game before.

_The wicked will perish._

Yes!  Yes, it was all coming back to him.  He’d taken on physical form.  He’d seen the face of Tesarus, had spoken with him, had nestled within his grinder, as he had so often done in life.  And then, he had perished.  Again.

So why then, was he here, reliving the same psychedelic non-existence that had plagued him before his brief moment of respite.  And where _was_ here?

Flashes of color and consciousness drew inwards, converging within a core of darkness, the core of Vos.  He could hear – not the unworldy screams of his previous journey back into reality, but a soft groaning.  It didn’t hurt nearly so much this time.  He supposed that was a good thing.

Still, although he could hear and feel, taste and touch, he could see only blackness.  His knees were drawn to his chest again, his arms wrapped around, holding them in tight.  The slightest shift in movement found him bumping up against a wall, a wall which closed in all around him.

Ah yes.  His box again.

This was good.  He _liked_ his box.  He’d spent most of his life in the thing, once his original master had discarded him like the disposable he was.  Had been.   _Megatron_ had changed that.  Megatron had seen his worth.  Megatron had given him a name, a job, freedom.  Megatron had been his savior and salvation.

And his damnation.

No.   _Tarn_ had been his damnation.  Megatron was a glorious angel of enlightenment, while Tarn was envoy to the Unmaker himself.  He never should have followed . . .

His frame gave an involuntary shudder – for but a moment, the walls around him, that protected him, vanished.  He was no longer a mech, but a consciousness, screaming in torment, as his existence was torn apart by heat and fire and death.

But it passed quickly enough, leaving him back in the blackness of his respite.  In his box.  

What had _that_ been?

His thoughts had turned remorseful.  And in response, his body had faded away.  Were they connected?  Primus, he hoped not.  He couldn’t stand the thought of having his thoughts monitored, having the bad thoughts punished by some unknown cosmic horror.

. . .

What was he thinking?  That was ridiculous!  Thought crimes?  The will of the universe?  Why would the universe care if he felt guilt for the sins he’d committed?  Pit, he’d have thought that was what it would want.

He shook his head, enjoying the way it made his crest brush against the walls that encased him.  This was too much to think about.  It was better to enjoy the embrace of his home, turn off his mind, and just _rest_.  He’d spent the better part of seven million years in such a state.  He could stay like this forever.  No suffering.  No remorse.  Just him.  Blindly existing . . .

But the will of the universe had other plans.

He heard the sharp _ker-thunk_ of somebody messing with the latch of his box, and soon it was coming open, light pouring in to blind him.  He lifted a spindly arm to shield his over-sensitized optics.

“This one is alive.”

Vos recoiled at the sound of the familiar voice.  No!  I couldn’t be!  He struggled to bury himself deeper into the claustrophobic space, but strong, silver hands were reaching in, pulling his struggling frame from the box, closer and closer.

“What do you suppose, Shockwave?  Is it salvageable?”

“I believe so, Lord Megatron.”

It couldn’t be!  Lord Megatron couldn’t be here!  He was alive and well, and Vos was not.  Vos was _dead_ , at Lord Megatron’s hands.  And yet here he was now in those same hands, those hands that had ripped the life from so many, himself included.  He shivered, despite himself.  He should not have been so frightened.  He had worshipped Lord Megatron in life.  Lord Megatron had been his savior, had pulled him from seven million years of stasis in the storage case his master had dumped him in – an unneeded tool, not even worthy of a name.

He never _had_ found out what had happened to the guy.  He probably hadn’t meant to leave Vos in the box for so long.  Most likely, he had been killed unexpectedly and mysteriously.  Otherwise, Vos surely would have been smelted with him.

But what did any of that matter?  Megatron had found him.  Megatron had saved him, pulled him from the prison that was his home, just like he was doing now, had given him a name, a life, a purpose.  He belonged to Megatron, totally and completely.

“Are you certain he is not defective?  He won’t stop twitching.  Perhaps death would be more kind,” Megatron mused, staring down Vos’s trembling frame.  Primus, he couldn’t stop shaking.  He had shook back then too.  Was he trapped in his first encounter with his lord and master, or was he reacting to the memory of their final encounter?

“It is your decision, My Lord.  These Disposables often suffer from faulty coding.  I am honestly surprised that he has survived so long in such confinement.  His frame must have induced stasis on its own.  None of the others were even half so well-preserved.”

“You,” Megatron said, and beneath the power of his direct acknowledgment, Vos couldn’t help but cease all movement.  It was in his coding.  A mech of authority ( _Lord_ Megatron, right?) had addressed him.  He had no choice but to obey.  “What is your name?”

_< <R-9726SL,>> _he responded, in the only language he knew.  But something was wrong here.  He hadn’t known a word of NeoCybex at the time.  He shouldn’t have been able to understand Megatron, or Shockwave for that matter.  This wasn’t how it had gone down, was it?

“What was that, Shockwave?”

“Disposable caste mechs aren’t given designations.  Only serial numbers.  Judging by the length of his, I would surmise he was from quite a large batch.  He must have been war-forged.  There would be plenty of weapons in circulation at the time.”

“Weapons?” Megatron repeated, though his vibrant, red optics remained on Vos, scrutinizing.

“The barrel on his back is that of a rifle-class mech.  The SL line, I believe.  It is my understanding that they are quite accurate.  Very easy to fire, even for a mech with terrible aim.”

“Is that so?”

_< <Where am I?  What is going on?!>> _Vos questioned, but Megatron did not appear to hear him.

He was staring at him again, his eyes strangely sad – so different from the raw fury and black antimatter Vos remembered from their last encounter.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

~~~

Vos woke up somewhere warm, hot, burning.  Was this Hell?  Surely it was; he had no body again.  No sensation, save for heat and pain.

No.  

No, he didn’t want this!  He wanted to exist!  He’d been existing so well before – in Megatron’s arms, back during the good time, back before he’d made all the wrong choices, back before he was banished to the Pit by his very salvation.  

The fire burned at him, ate at him, left him sick and reeling.  He wanted out.  He wanted to go back.   _He wanted to go back!_

~~~

The laboratory was cold – a faulty heating system and poor insulation had left the building vulnerable to the elements, and the fledgling Decepticon army didn’t yet have the means to devote to such minor issues.  Minor in _their_ eyes anyway.  The instability of the temperatures made for an irritating and uncontrollable variable in all experiments performed within, much to the chagrin of the scientists that worked there.

Vos was not one of those scientists.  Not yet.  Instead, he acted as an unofficial overseer, perched on Lord Megatron’s shoulder, ready to transform, to be wielded at a moment’s notice, just as he always was.  And yet, the busy nature of the laboratory, standing in conflict with the silent, sterile experiments struck Vos, or Forestock in this case, as oddly fascinating.  He couldn’t understand the complicated words which the scientists spoke, but the rhythmic, staccato nature of them soothed his audials.  He quite liked science talk.

“How is the spark modification going?” Megatron asked.  Forestock understood a few of the words.  The simple ones.  His processor had been downloading the Neocybex patch for several months now, albeit with some difficulty.  His Disposable caste processor had just never been built with such upgrades in mind, and he’d slept right through the rise of this new language as the common tongue.  And though he could understand a handful of phrases, he could scarcely get the words to form on his tongue.  It was best to stay silent.

“It is going well,” the orderly replied.  “We are . . . energy levels . . . protoforms . . . I believe that they will be ready for combat within the month.  If . . . Lord Megatron.”  It hurt to concentrate so hard, but he was going to learn.  He didn’t want to miss a single word uttered by his new lord and master.

“Perfect,” Megatron replied.  Vos knew that word.  He liked that word.  And then, those perfect red eyes were on him, smiling fondly.  "How would you like to get a workout, Forestock?"

_Forestock_.  The name Megatron had gifted him with.  It filled his spark with joy to hear it.   << _Yes!  I would love that! >> _he gushed, nodding vigorously.   He wanted anything, so long as Megatron also wanted it.  He was loyal to his new master, the one who had saved him, had granted him a new life.  Base coding combined with gratitude to create a deep, unending passion to serve as Megatron’s arm, an extension of his self, for the rest of his life.

Vos transformed, twisting, turning, restructuring himself into a rifle to be used by his master – to what end, he did not know nor care.  But transformation did not see him safe in those powerful, wonderful arms.  Instead, he was back, in the fire – everything around him red, red, _red_.  

_No!  Not this!!_

Vos had to get out, had to get back to his body, back to Megatron.

But Megatron didn’t want him anymore, did he?  Because Vos hadn’t been loyal.  Vos had sided with Tarn.  Vos had betrayed Megatron.

When he remanifested this time, it was on the battlefield, his comrades ahead of him – Tarn, and Helex, and Tesarus.  Before them, stood a force field, and within their prey – ex-leader of the Decepticons: Megatron.  The fool had cornered himself, trapped in a bubble that would never let him out, just as that foolish Autobot had done before him.  All that was left to do, was for the DJD to put him out of his misery.  The integrity of the Decepticon cause commanded it.

He remembered watching as Tarn punched his way through the barrier; he'd been so proud of himself, at least for the three seconds it took for the DJD to follow him through.  But Tarn had been an idiot, had led his team, his closest allies, straight into a trap of Megatron's design.

The verbal beatdown to follow was brutal, but even that couldn't compare to the sheer terror shared by every member of the DJD when Lord Megatron's eyes turned to antimatter, when he unleashed his blame with a laser-guided fury – as if he'd been wielding Vos once again to shoot each of his most fanatic followers down.

Vos was the first to go – the smallest target, the most vulnerable, his death the most likely to hurt his teammates.  Megatron had torn him limb from limb, his gore and viscera splattering his companions as the antimatter took its swift, brutal vengeance upon his treacherous self.  He deserved the pain.  He deserved the betrayal.  He had once been Megatron’s most loyal follower, and look at what had become of him!

He was in the fire again, burning, searing agony, but this time, he did not retreat back into his memories.  This time, he held on, he endured, it was no less than he deserved.  But the fire, it seemed, wasn’t fire at all.  He was in a smelter, close to the spark of another, not unlike the inside of Helex.  

Was he . . . alive?  Surely not, but he could feel shape coming back to him, each moment increasing his agony, as he now had metal that could be melted down, that could cause him physical sensation to add to the spiritual.  And Primus, it was hell.  He was screaming, flailing, now that he had the voice and body for both.

“What the –?!”

“Primus, get him out of there!”

The world opened up before him, and strong arms latched onto his barrel, heedless of the heat in that melting metal, pulling him from within his fiery prison and out into the ice cold light of day.  He could do nothing but scream and flail, unable to think, to see, unaware of all that surrounded him for minutes – hours perhaps?  He drifted in and out of consciousness throughout, tidbits of the world around him reaching him every so often.

“He – he came back!”

. . .

“What now?”

. . .

“Kaon.  Where’s Kaon.”

. . .

“Frag frag frag!  Leave him!  We got Sparkeaters on our afts!”

. . .

. . .

. . .

The ground was cold – everything was cold after that hellish stint in Helex’s smelter (he was certain of that now).  But he was here, and he was whole, sitting in a dark nothingness, with only a heatless fire providing light for himself and the two mechs that sat in front of him, lost in their own conversation.

“If Vos wasn’t dead weight before, he surely is now,” Helex said, folding his arms.

“You really want to ditch him after all that we went through to get him this far?” Tesarus retorted.  “Besides, he sparked out, and then _came back_!  If he can do it, maybe Tarn can too.  Or maybe he has some sort of clue to where Kaon went.”

“Too bad Tarn was eaten by a Sparkeater.”

“We don’t know for certain that’s the end for him.  If there was life after death, and life after sparking out, maybe there’s life after Sparkeater?”

“You are way too optimistic, buddy.”

Vos stirred, forcing himself into a sitting position, blearily staring between his companions, trying his hardest to ignore the blinding fire between them.  “Tesarus . . . Helex . . . “  His throat felt dry and scratchy, his vocaliser spitting more static than proper modulation, but it was enough to draw the attention of the behemoths.

“Vos!  You’re awake!”  Tesarus scurried forward on hands and knees – quite the surreal sight, watching a mech so large move with such glee.  The next thing Vos knew, he was being scooped up into a massive hand, and pulled in close, cradled against the mech’s gaping, tooth-filled chest.  “Primus, I’m relieved.  Look Helex!  He’s _awake_.”  It was said in the same tone as a _I told you so_ , childish and mean.  Helex ignored the jab.

“Glad to see you back, buddy.”  He crept closer, reaching out to stroke Vos’s faceplate with one of his smaller hands.  Vos wasn’t sure he cared for the attention.

_< <Primus, will you put me down?  I’m not a toy to be coddled.>>_ Naturally, neither of his companions understood his words.  Helex would have understood a handful of spiky mask buried in his palm, but Vos was still too woozy to pull the thing from his face.  He had no choice but to allow the poking and cooing.  Bastards, the both of them.

“What was it like being out like that?” Tesarus asked.  “Did you see Tarn?  Or Kaon maybe?”

Vos stared into that cross-obscured face, long and hard and angry.  He had no way of answering the first question, but at least the second and third could be done.  He shook his head, pointedly.   _< <You are an idiot,>> _he added, knowing that he would not be understood.

“Tess, you jackass.  Don’t ask questions you know you won’t understand the answer to,” Helex spat, folding his larger arms over his chest.  His smaller were still on Vos, however – had found their way behind the spires of his crest, stroking at a particularly sensitive spot.  Vos leaned into it, despite himself.  Frag, that felt good.  He’d forgotten what pleasant sensations felt like.

_Nothing like being wielded by Megatron though . . ._

It was best to keep such thoughts from his mind.  Megatron was a trigger, one that reminded him of his every failure, that pressed him to disappear back into his own personal layer of Hell, where the pleasant memories lay, forever tarnished by the knowledge of his own betrayal.

“No no no!  Don’t spark out again!” Tesarus demanded, squeezing him tight enough to leave his vents choking to pass air.  

_< <Let go you oversized-frag-hole!>> _he spat.  Despite the language barrier, Tesarus seemed to understand the sentiment, and loosened his grip.  And despite his own weakness, Vos climbed up along that massive arm, to perch on a heavy shoulder, away from Helex’s coddling.  This was better.

Helex, with his hands now free, seemed to remember that he had a tough-guy facade to keep up.  He rested his tiny arms on his hips, his expression darkening.  “Okay.  We got Vos back, provided the little weakling doesn’t off himself again.”

_< <Frag you!  At least I’m smart enough to know when I’ve fucked up!  Go suck Tarn’s shriveled up spike, you piece of rusted slag!>>  _It felt good to be flinging insults again.  He only wished Helex and Tesarus were smart enough to understand them.

“Don’t take that tone of voice with me, Sparklet.  We’ve been hauling your useless aft around for weeks now, with the Sparkeaters on our tailpipes all the while.  Carry your own itty bitty weight, or get fragged.”

“We got a gun now,” Tesarus commented.  “We can blow up Sparkeaters.  Should be fun.”

“We’ve _had_ guns,” Helex retorted.  “Not my fault you’re too thick to figure out how to conjure ‘em up.”

Vos wasn’t sure what all _that_ was about.  What had he missed while he was out?   _< <Are you two going to insult each other all day, or do we have a plan?>>  _He sighed, as neither Helex nor Tesarus bothered paying attention to him.  Neocybex.  He’d have to learn it sooner or later.  “What we do . . . << _next?  From here on in?  Frag it all!  What’s the word? >>  _NOW!”  Close enough.  Helex looked up to him, frowning.

“Yeah, Tess.  What’s the plan now?”

'Plan.'  Yes.  Good word.  He’s have to remember that one.  'P-L-A-N.'

“Well, we got Vos back.  That’s good.  No clue where to find Kaon, if he’s here, but you said Tarn got eaten by a Sparkeater.  Maybe he’s not digested yet.  And I’m tired of running away anyway.  I think . . .”  Secondary arms grabbed Vos around the waist, dropping him back into Tesarus’s waiting hands, which held him as though wielding a rifle, despite the fact that Vos had not transformed.  Rusty aft.  “We should go hunting.”

“Hunting,” Helex repeated, skeptical at first, but then, slowly, his frown twisted upward, spreading across his broad face.  “Yeah, hunting.  Why the frag not?  Ain’t got nothing better to do anyway.”  He moved his gaze downward, reaching out a small finger to lift Vos’s chin.  Had he a mouth, Vos would have bitten it off.  “What do _you_ think buddy?”

_< <I think you’re all idiots, but what choice do I have?>>_

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Helex snickered.  Primus, these morons never learned, did they?  This was their punishment, their purgatory.  There was no happy ending for such vile creatures as them.  

And yet, somehow, being back with his old friends felt good, like being home.  It wasn’t the comforting _rightness_ of Megatron’s arms, nor the easy compliance of following Tarn, but he couldn’t deny the warm feeling he felt bubbling within his spark, so unlike the scathing heat he’d felt before.  Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad?  Maybe this wasn’t Hell?  Maybe there was a future for them after all?

Yeah right.  They were all fragged sideways.  Oh well.  May as well enjoy the ride.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I admit I'm not 100% satisfied with the way this chapter ties to the others, but it's my own damn fault for having no plan in mind when I started. This should help get me back on track. Sorry 'bout that x.x


	5. Waking Nightmare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tesarus has been plagued by nightmares as of late, and they're creeping into his reality.

Tesarus was tired.  His sleep had been plagued by nightmares for days now, each one more terrifying than the last.  He’d wake up, clutching a peacefully-sleeping Vos in his hands, his own frame overheated and buzzing with charge.  It was impossible to get back to sleep after the things he’d seen.  Instead, four tired eyes would stare out into the darkness beyond their fire, looking for the horrors that lurked in the shadows beyond.  It wasn’t an incredibly sustainable way to live; he hoped that they found their Sparkeaters soon.

They’d been on the hunt for three days now, and so far, they’d had no luck.  The things had been pursuing him and Helex for months, but the second Vos came back online, they disappeared.  Helex seemed to think that Vos’s frame was throwing the things off the scent.  Without a spark in the open, they had no reason to come.

Tesarus thought it was because the Sparkeaters knew they were being hunted, though he didn’t dare tell Helex that.  And whatever Vos thought was lost to the language barrier.  It was good to have him back.

Despite the joy of the reunion, the little group needed a purpose in order to sustain itself.  It was Helex that had at last come up with a plan.  Tesarus really hoped it would work; he wasn’t going to last much longer without a proper night’s sleep.  Already, he could feel the tips of his fingers fading away whenever he wasn’t paying attention.  At this rate, he would spark out, no matter how much he clung to his optimism.

Unfortunately, Tesarus needed his fingers for the plan to work.  Vos was quite good at aiming himself, true, but he still needed someone to pull the trigger and point him in the right direction.  It would require the sort of focus Tesarus wasn’t entirely sure he could muster at the moment.  But he would find it; Helex was counting on him.

Helex himself now sat in a clearing down below, with his smelter open, and somewhere deep within, his own spark bared.  Tesarus couldn’t imagine allowing molten magma into his spark chamber, but Helex had been built to withstand it.  In fact, judging by the sated grin on his face, he was quite enjoying the sensation.  Tesarus only hoped it was enough to lure out their quarry.

“Primus, I hate this plan,” he muttered.  Vos said nothing in response, but that was fine.  He wasn’t going to say anything important anyway.  Tesarus was just glad to have someone to vent to.  “These Sparkeaters just ain’t comin’ out, Vos.  I think they’re waiting us out.”  Saying it out loud brought a hundred new and unpleasant thoughts to the forefront of his mind.

“Actually, I bet they are.  They’re smart.  They know that I’m getting weaker.”

This time, Vos did mutter something, but damned if Tesarus knew what it meant.  He took it to mean, ‘Please, go on.’

“I’m afraid I’m gonna spark out, Vos.  I can’t sleep lately – every time I close my eyes, I see Kaon’s face.  Kaon’s crushed, misshapen face, crumbling to dust in the wind.  I see him crawling towards me, begging silently for help.  I see hundreds of him, thousands of him.  Every night.  Dying.  Always dying.  And not just like, normal dying, but the kind of deaths that would be fun if it weren’t happening to one of us.  Like, I see him all grinded up sometimes, I see him melted down, or like, filled with holes, dangling from hooks, writhing as Tarn talks him to death…

“I just – it’s crazy seeing that happen to someone you cared about, and like, even after he dies, I can still hear his voice, all like ‘you let this happen, Tes.  This is your fault!  And I just – how am I supposed to sleep like that?  So I don’t sleep at all.  I lie awake, slowly losing my mind, and I think they can sense it.  The Sparkeaters know that I’m losing it.  They know that I’m crazy.  They’re waiting until I spark out.  They’re waiting for me to be –”

“SHUT.  UP!”  

There was a loud clatter, as Vos landed on the solid ground, letting out a pained yell.  Tesarus’s hands had vanished; Vos had fallen right through them.

“Hey!  Pay attention out there!” Helex called out, but Tesarus paid it no mind.  He was already on his knees, pulling Vos into his arms, and stroking his barrel with a slew of rushed apologies, his body whole once more.

“Oh Vos!  Frag, I’m sorry!  I didn’t mean to drop you!  Primus, what’s wrong with me?  Frag it, these Sparkeaters need to show up soon.  I want to be able to sleep again!”

Vos was babbling incomprehensibly in a venomous voice.  Tesarus assumed it was his usual barrage of insults that were best left ignored.  At least, until he let loose with the Neo Cybex.

“SEE!  BACK!”

“‘See back?  Vos, what does that mean?”  

It was the snarling that answered his question for him.  He felt the icy presence of death, and spun just in time to clock the Sparkeater with the butt of Vos’s alt mode.  It went flying, and Vos hissed in pain.

“Fuck you!”

Tesarus didn’t have time to argue.  The first Sparkeater hadn’t been alone.  Five more were closing in on his position, though how they’d gone unnoticed was anyone’s guess.  And come to think of it, why had they come up here, when Helex had he spark on display down below?

He didn’t have time to aim.  Instead, he pointed Vos in the general direction of the Sparkeaters and fired again and again, hoping for the best.  One fell, but two more managed to slip past the volley of gunfire, closing in on either side of him.  They were small and agile – the first was scurrying up his frame, much like Vos liked to do, only Vos didn’t have claws made of ice.  The second was underfoot, determined to trip him up.  It did a good job of it too.

Tesarus fired another two shots as he fell, grazing one of the remaining Sparkeaters and missing the other.  At that point, he lost his hold on Vos, who went flying out of reach.  He didn’t see where he landed.  All he saw was the hollow-eyed gaze of Kaon in the face of the Sparkeater that straddled his throat, dislodging its jaw, and planting its kiss of death on Tesarus’s open mouth.

_ Bang! _

The Sparkeater collapsed to the ground, dead.  The second Sparkeater that had been crawling up Tesarus’s frame changed targets.  Leaping over Tesarus’s gaping chest to attack the new enemy at his back.  Unfortunately for it, the thing had leapt straight into the reach of Tesarus’s secondary arms.  They caught it easily, and shoved the struggling creature into the hungry mouth of his grinder.  The screams it made were too soul-chilling to be satisfactory.

He heard a commotion up ahead, more gunfire, and the desperate, piercing wails of another Sparkeater.  Tesarus struggled to sit up around the churning of his grinder, hoping to leap back into the fray.  There were two Sparkeaters left, and he didn’t want Vos and Helex to have all the fun.

But it was already over.  One Sparkeater was dead on the ground by the time he got back to his feet, and the other was pinned beneath Vos’s scrawny frame.  He was less than half the thing’s size, but he’d latched onto the monster’s earlier shoulder wound, digging his fingers in with a manic delight, and murmuring in the Primal Vernacular all the while.  The creature wailed and writhed in response, as any of their victims would have.  It was all a little nostalgic, and enlightening as well.  So Sparkeaters could feel pain.

“Good job, Vos,” Tesarus praised.  “Nice cleanup.”

“Way to fall on your aft, Tes,” Helex scoffed.  “Next time, I’m not saving you.”

“Hey, I killed one of them!”

A sudden shriek came from Vos’s direction, and Helex and Tesarus alike raced forth to protect their friend from the unknown threat that assailed him.  But there was no threat.  Vos remained seated atop the Sparkeater, but he’d ceased his ministrations, his hands hanging in the air, uncertain.

“Kaon?” he murmured, confused.

“Kaon?  What?”  Tesarus leaned over the creature to look.  Indeed, though the body was different, the face looked identical to Kaon’s.  Come to think of it, the earlier Sparkeater had appeared the same.  Were they all like this?  Tesarus shivered; his nightmares of the past week had come back to haunt him.

“Primus,” Helex muttered, “what kind of sick joke is this?  Why the frag do they all have Kaon’s face?”

“Tes?”  It took Tesarus an embarrassingly long moment to realize that Vos was talking to him, red eyes locked expectantly on his massive frame.  “Tes, you dream?”

“What was that now?” Helex added, closing in.  “Do you know what this is?”

“No,” Tesarus protested, shaking his head, but Vos wasn’t satisfied.

“Tesarus,” he growled.  “Kaon.  Dream.  You!”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say!” Tesarus snapped back, lunging at his miniscule companion.  Vos was used to the false attacks by this point; he knew well that Tesarus would never truly hurt him for something so trivial.  But he yelped and toppled over anyway, as the Sparkeater beneath him suddenly ceased to be.  A stream of angry words in the Primal Vernacular was quick to follow.

Helex rushed forward, as though intending to investigate this impossible situation.  “The fuck?  Where’d they go?”  Indeed, all of the Sparkeaters had vanished from the clearing, but the universe wasn’t done screwing with them yet.  The rocky hills of the quarry faded away, replaced by a familiar expanse of blue flowers that extended to eternity.  

No.  Not this place again.

Vos had scurried to his feet, hunched in on himself, and looking to and fro with a wide-eyed terror, and even Helex was clutching his gun more tightly than was strictly necessary.

“It’s okay,” he insisted, “we’re the only living creatures in this place.  Us and the Sparkeaters.  It’s just a memory.  It can’t hurt us.”  The assertion would have sounded more compelling, had he not stuttered his way through it.  Vos certainly didn’t believe him, instead deciding to scamper up Tesarus’s arm, and into his grinder, muttering in his own tongue the whole way.

“Why here?” Tesarus murmured.  “And why now?  Is it ‘cause we killed those Sparkeaters?”

“Can’t be,” Helex assured.  “Tarn and I killed plenty of Sparkeaters before, and this never happened.  But I mean,” he folded both sets of arms, and licked his lips nervously, “this is just a memory we all happen to share.  It only makes sense that it would come up sooner or later.”

“Maybe,” Tesarus agreed, “but let’s not stick around, okay?  I don’t want Vos to spark out again.”

Vos muttered something that sounded vaguely like, ‘No you,’ which Tesarus would have punished him for in less extreme circumstances.  Maybe a quick rev of his engine, or a slow spin of his blades, just enough to spook the little aft.  But Vos wasn’t wrong, and everyone knew it.

Regardless, Helex ignored the banter.  “Yeah,” he said, “let’s get outta here.  How ‘bout this way?”  He took two steps – two measly steps and the scenery changed for the worse.  This was still the Necrobot’s planet, only now, the flowers were gone, the horizon had closed in, surrounding their small group in a bubble of orange energy, and straight ahead was another Sparkeater, Kaon’s face on Lord Megatron’s body, watching them hungrily.

“Frag, frag no!” Tesarus yelped, followed by a thud and a clang underfoot.  He had faded just long enough for Vos to fall through, though this time, the poor bot was too terrified to swear.  He wrapped his gangly arms around his slim belly and backed away.  He’d been the first to die; of course he was scared.  Even Tesarus could remember the agonizing feeling of being torn to pieces by Megatron’s antimatter.  Did this Sparkeater possess the same powers?

“Vos, come back!” Helex called, but Vos had already split, hurling himself at the barrier that encased them, tiny fingers scrabbling uselessly at the wall of energy.

“It was never about keeping you out.  It was about sealing you in.  Two fusion cannons.  Look at yourself.”  The words were familiar, even if the voice was not.  The Sparkeater could not match lord Megatron’s gruff, powerful charisma, but the ghostly wail that emanated from it managed the same effect.  “I’d won– finally, after five million years of fighting – of fighting myself - I’d won.  I was prepared to accept my fate.  I was at peace.  I was happy.  And then you came along and ruined everything!”

Helex raised his rifle and shot at the Sparkeater, blowing its head clean off.  “Take that!” he screamed.  His rage, however, was quickly replaced with alarm, as the weapon melted in his hands.  “What the?!”

“Mark this day Tarn – this is the day the dream dies.  I’m shutting you down,” the Sparkeater continued, steadfast, despite its eerie headless state.  Helex wasn’t done however.  He raced forward, wrapping his massive hands around the thing’s shoulders, and hoisting it into the air.

“We have to stop this thing, before it can finish.  You both know what will happen if it does.”

“Vos, please,” Tesarus begged, but Vos continued to fight the wall.  Useless.  Tesarus was left with no choice but to join Helex, swinging his right fist forward with all his might.  He successfully managed to punch a hole through the creature’s empty chest.  It fell limp in Helex’s hands.  Still, however, the words continued.

“Vos!”

“No.  Not “Vos” anymore.  Today, you die by your birth names.  Starting with you . . .”  With frantic energy, Tesarus continued to wail on the Sparkeater which, by all rights, should have been dead by now, and Helex joined him.  But no matter how hard they fought, it wasn’t enough to prevent the inevitable.

“Forestock.”

Vos screamed bloody murder from the wall at their backs.  Helex refused to look, his entire focus trapped on the Sparkeater, trying to prevent his own impending fate, but not Tesarus.  Tesarus was still a stubborn fool, but in his own way.  He whipped around and raced towards Vos’s struggling frame, held aloft not by the antimatter, but by some invisible force.  In his own language, he screamed and pleaded, though it was to no avail.  He too, had proven incapable of saving himself.  It was up to Tesarus to be the hero.

He dove, using the force of his weight to shove Vos back to the ground, just in time for his body to tear itself apart.  For the second time, Tesarus found himself covered in Vos’s innards, disgust and shame welling within him.  “No.”

“Crucible.” 

Something was wrong.  The Sparkeater was surely dead, so why then was it still talking?  Unless  _ it _ wasn’t the being responsible for their current predicament.  As fast as he could, Tesarus scanned their prison, hoping to find any sort of clue as to the identity of their assailant, but everything appeared normal.  Even Helex had been hurled back to the original position of his death.  Tesarus was in place, as were Tarn, and ‘Megatron.’  Everything was exactly how it had been on the night they died.

Wait . . .

Before he could properly process his thought, Helex was ripped apart before his eyes, his agonized screams somehow more unnerving than Vos’s death rattle had been.  It was only Tesarus now. 

_ Think, think!  What is different?  What is wrong?  Megatron’s not the one doing this.  Ignore the Sparkeater.  Who could it – _

“Scissorsaw.”

The answer came to him as his own name sounded out.  Tesarus lunged forward, towards Tarn, Tarn who was dead, Tarn who should have been in the belly of a Sparkeater.  At the motion, Tarn turned towards him, his face disfigured, mask warped just enough to show his smug smirk.  Tesarus was too late.

By some invisible hand, his own frame was forced into the air.  He kicked and grasped, but no matter how he tried, he couldn’t fight Tarn’s will.  “Please,” he begged, “please Tarn, don’t do this!  You don’t want to do this.  This isn’t you!”

And in his own smooth voice, Tarn replied, “But it is.  Don’t you see, Tesarus?  I’m the one who killed you.”  His frame faded to grey as he spoke, dissolved with age, optics no longer red, but hollow and black, as Kaon’s had once been.  The details of his frame and kibble melted away, until they were the indistinguishable spikes and spires of the average Sparkeater, but the mask it wore was Tarn’s; the voice it spoke with, was Tarn’s.  Tesarus had no doubt in his mind that, Sparkeater or not,  _ this _ was Tarn.

“I’m the one who killed us all.”

It was the last thing Tesarus heard before the sound of his own screaming drowned everything out.  Once more, he was being torn apart – not by antimatter, but by the will of their dispossessed leader.  Why was his will so powerful?  He’d let himself die by his own weakness.  Why then, could he do this?  Why?

But none of that mattered anymore.  Tesarus was the one that was dead.  Tesarus and Helex and Vos.  Finally, he could rest.


	6. Purgatory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helex finds himself lost in a barrage of memories, but what awaits him at the end is far from anything he expected.

The factory was loud, hot, cloying, with the smell of melting scrap metal and and thick fumes filling the air.  He was one of the many  – the workers, drones, slaves  – completely replaceable, disposable.  He hadn’t even been given a name.  For the industrial class mechs, a serial number would do.  Most died too soon to develop much in the way of personality, either from workplace accidents, or overwork, or malfunction; Smelters weren’t exactly built to last, after all, forged or no.

And Smelter H-8L3 was no different from the rest.  True, he liked the heat of the fire, the feel of scrap between his teeth, the eerie scream let off as pressure met with heat in the smelting pits  – it was his lullaby.  Perhaps he was a little fragged in the head, but they all were.  This was just the way things were; there was no sense in dreaming of further.  H-8L3 had been born a Smelter, and a Smelter’s life he would lead.

For year after year, he worked in the factory, with gruelling days and short recharge cycles, leaving him exhausted, verging on a breakdown.  The day they were no longer useful was a day of great significance for Smelters  – it was the day they at last returned to the fire.  But H-8L3 never did return to the fire.

Instead, he was loaned out to a factory in Kaon, who had recently suffered a Smelter shortage, and during a chance visit to a bar in his downtime, he had met the mech who would change his life.  Lord Megatron.

A small crowd had gathered around this mech  – apparently locally famous, to listen to his words.  He spoke of freedom, equality, of a society that was just, where merit determined worth, rather than alt mode.  And for the first time in his life, H-8L3 wanted more than what he’d been given by Adaptus.  He wanted a future, wanted to see the world, to pick a few fights, sample different ores, to do so very many things, things that didn’t involve being thrown into a smelting pit once his usefulness had worn out.

He wanted to be a real mech.

When he left the bar that day, he was no longer H-8L3, but Crucible.  It was a fitting name  – a melting pot, a smelter.  And as he began to feel, to want, to care, so too did his world of blacks and greys alter itself irrevocably.  Reds, oranges, and yellows filled the void in his life, flooding his senses in a brilliant bouquet of color and taste.  He may have lived some two thousand years prior, but that was the day he was born.  

The smelting pit was the most magnificent to behold  – brilliant, burning.  It was all he could do not to throw himself into his rapturous embrace.  But he couldn’t die yet.  So he contented himself with watching.  And waiting.

But as he worked, as he grew, as he came to live, he began to realize that something wasn’t quite right.  He was a factory mech  – he’d lived his shallow excuse for a life underground, working the scrapyards, and yet, memories kept trickling in, of another time, another place, things he couldn’t possibly have known.

There was a wintry world, and a mech with no eyes.  A desert, a battle, a betrayal most intimate.  And there was that blind mech once more, a mech he’d never met.  He saw a field of blue flowers, a traitor to the cause, and an enemy; swords, and guns,  and a turbofox; lightning, anger.  Death.  So much death.  The death of a loved one, at the hands of his God  – of his family, of himself.

He couldn’t understand these visions of agony, tried his best to ignore them.  They persisted, but soon he grew accustomed to the weird insights of places and things that felt so familiar, yet were so surely foreign.

Years passed in that factory, but change was on the horizon; it hadn’t been just Crucible whose life was changed by Megatron.  He joined the Decepticons the moment he learned of their existence, leaving the beauty of the smelting pit, and the ugly lie it represented, behind him.  He was one of three Smelters to do so.

His brutality, creativity, and stubborn conviction had made him stand out amongst his new allies.  While other Smelters were sent to (and killed on) the front lines, Crucible had been sent to Interrogation, to train under the genius eye of Vortex, a sadistic, psychotic Rotary mech, also from Helex.  Crucible learned plenty from the little monster, but Vortex wasn’t the most important mech he’d met in that position.  There was another trainee, a Grinder from Tesarus by the name of Scissorsaw, the only mech Crucible had ever seen who could match him in size and creativity alike.  They became fast friends.

But it was Helex who was handpicked to join the Decepticon Justice Division.

“From today,” Tarn had said, his hand placed over Crucible’s face, smearing pink energon down his cheeks, “you are Crucible no more.  You are now an entity, an idea  – the fourth city to dedicate itself to the sacred cause of Lord Megatron.  You are Helex henceforth.

“From today, your sole purpose in life is to punish those who would forsake the most noble of causes, and to dissuade others from doing the same.  To be a Decepticon, is to be loyalty, conviction, devotion itself.  To err is unacceptable.  Do you, Helex, agree to take up the mantle of judge, jury, and executioner?  To become a force for order and justice?  To follow Lord Megatron’s wishes, to shed all you used to be, to be a mech no more?”

“I do,” said Crucible,  _ Helex _ , meaning every word.

“Then I welcome you to the DJD.”  Tarn removed his hand and stepped back, revealing his two smiling companions.  There was Tesarus, a sadistic X-Winged Jet, who revelled in psycological horror.  Whenever he hunted a name on the list, there was bound to be collateral casualties.  Everyone the target knew or cared about became a target himself.  It was delightfully fucked up.  

The other mech had been a blind electric chair by the name of Kaon.  Kaon was a bit of a snob  – a mech created specifically to be an originating member of the DJD.  He was a gleeful sadist, and yet somehow, emotionally vulnerable, a trait that Helex found infuriating.  Still, the obnoxious little twerp was family, and he was quite good at his job.

He was also missing his head.  Helex didn’t know how the mech was alive without a head  – perhaps he wasn’t.  Still, no one else seemed to mind, so he ignored the headless state of his companion as best he could.  It was an easy feat when he was so bogged down with missions.  He was surprised by just how many Decepticons there were that dared to turn their backs on Lord Megatron’s cause.  Disgusting.

Vos, a small Iron Maiden, had been the last to join, and tragically, the first to die.  Helex had been devastated.  He’d torn the mark that had killed the little guy limb from limb with his bare hands, lapped his cranial fluids from the mech’s gaping helm, and shoved its brain module down the thing’s throat, before at last extinguishing his spark.  It was a hollow revenge.  In the end, it had been Vos’s fragility to kill him, not an aberrant cannon.  Helex had to accept that and move on.

The next Vos was bigger, stronger, a vicious monoformer with hooked limbs.  Kaon had taken to him right away, and the pair became involved, much to Tarn’s disapproval.  Devoting oneself to a lover meant less room to devote oneself to Lord Megatron.  Helex agreed with their leader, if only because he was sick of seeing Kaon and Vos macking on one another in the common room every time he went in.  How Kaon accomplished this when he had no head was a bit of a mystery, but on the other hand, Vos had a gaping hole where his spark was, so it wasn’t that strange.  He also appeared strangely beastial, but that couldn’t have been right.  There were no beastformers in the DJD.

Tesarus was the next to die, and Helex had eagerly recommended his old friend from Interrogation to fill the empty role.  A bigger mech wouldn’t die the way Vos and Tesarus had.  A bigger mech was sturdy, invulnerable, fully capable of protecting himself.  Tarn agreed, and thus, Scissorsaw had become the next Tesarus.  The golden age of the DJD had begun.

And yet, he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right here.  Vos  – he was a perfect warrior, delightfully despicable, and his brutality knew no bounds.  Vos, the mech who was carrying on a passionate affair with Kaon; Vos, the crowned jewel of the DJD lineup, second only to Tarn  – Helex couldn’t trust him.  He should have.  By all rights, he had every reason to trust the guy, to fawn over him, to mold himself after him.  Doing so felt real, felt right, felt like the way history was meant to play out.  It was Helex that was wrong.

He was surely delusional.  Every so often, he’d see it  – instead of his companion with the gruesome appearance, he’d see a small, mustachioed minibot, or more frequently, a deranged turbofox.  Where his Decepticon badge should have gleamed in its DJD gold, he often saw the blunt edges and patronizing frown of the Autobot’s symbol.  A companion, a friend, a member of his family often struck him as a traitor  – the enemy come to keep tabs on the Decepticon Justice Division.  But that was ridiculous!  No Autobot had the bearings for such a move.

It wasn’t just Vos that was wrong, however.  In the quiet moments, when his attention was devoted elsewhere, he’d notice, barely perceptible, a flicker of red in the corner of his eye  – Kaon, watching him, head and all.  That was ridiculous!  Kaon had no head.  It was what made him Kaon.  And true, when he turned to look, reality took over.  Surely it was a trick of the light.  But that haunting image of a familiar face, leaking streams of vivid pink energon from the blank sockets of its optics, was more than enough to have Helex on edge.

“Hey Kaon,” he said one day, once he’d seen the image enough to be certain there must have been a reason for it, “can I talk to you alone?”

Kaon’s tesla coils shifted in a curious shrug.  “I suppose,” his voice said, clearly as if it had come from a real vocaliser.  Kaon led him to a closet on the Peaceful Tyranny, a closet that probably shouldn’t have existed, not because the doorway that led to it was located between Helex and Tesarus’s rooms where no door should be, but because, within its dark belly, was a world of iridescent blue flowers, glowing with the energy of a billion dead sparks.  What was this place?

“You wanted to talk to me?” Kaon pressed.  There it was!  He had the face again, only now, energon was dribbling from his mouth as well, and the seams of his helm.  Helex couldn’t help but stare.

“Are  – are you alright?  You’re bleeding.”

“It’s fine,” Kaon shrugged.  “Death is irrelevant.  Everything is in this place.  Our choices mean nothing.”

“O-kay . . .”  The mech was speaking nonsense.  “So uh  – I was, well, how long have you had a head?”

The empty sockets of Kaon’s face narrowed, as though they were real eyes.  “You’re asking the wrong question Helex.”

“I am?” he replied, dumbly.  “Then what question should I be asking?”

Kaon shook his head.  “I’m not a babysitter.  You’ll figure it out on your own, or you won’t.  I’m not long for this place.  Perhaps you can pass through too?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Then again,” he sighed, “perhaps not.  You never were known for your wit.  Too bad you couldn’t gain a smidge of intellect from all those brain modules you’ve eaten.”

“Hey!”  Helex jerked forward, resisting the urge to rip that pretty little head from its shoulders and crush it against the wall (why would he do such a thing to  _ Kaon _ ?  He liked Kaon!).  It was easy to resist such a horrible urge, however, when Kaon was no longer there.  Pit, the flower room wasn’t there either.  Instead, he was standing in the hallway, between his room and Tesarus’s, the exact spot where the mystery door had been only moments before.  Had he imagined the thing, or was there something else going on here?

~~~

There was definitely something else going on here.  From that moment on, the memories flew by at an alarming rate  – and that’s what they were, memories, corrupted by time and circumstance.  He’d seen Vos as a traitor, because Vos turned out to be a traitor.  He’d seen Kaon with no head because, in a horrific move he’d learned of only after the fact, Tarn had murdered Kaon in just that way, as part of a pissing match with Overlord, of all mechs.  His life was flashing by before his eyes, just like it was meant to do before a mech died.

Was that it then?  Was he dead?

Not just dead.  Double dead.  And so were the others, he was pretty sure.

He was in that blue field again, trapped within a forcefield, facing down Lord Megatron, with his terrified teammates at his side.  This was it.  This was where he died.  This was where he died both times, first by Lord Megatron’s hand, and then by Tarn’s.  And this was where he’d die again.

The antimatter ripped through him, there and gone before he had the chance to feel it rip him apart.  It was a small mercy, he supposed.  But now that he was dead for the third time, he didn’t know what to expect.

He’d awoken in an empty blackness, with nothing above him, nor below, nor around him for as far as the eye could see.  Nothing, that was, except for Kaon’s headless corpse.  Helex cringed away and crawled to his feet.  Wherever he was, there at least seemed to be solid ground beneath him, even if he couldn’t see it.

“So, you’ve made it this far.”

It was a voice he’d never again expected to hear.  Slowly, he turned away from Kaon’s headless corpse, and towards the figure at his back.  Vos.  Not  _ his _ Vos, the little cranky Rifle who spoke exclusively in dead languages, but the second Vos, the longest Vos, the Vos who had secretly been an Autobot spy, whom they’d domesticated upon finding out, who, despite all of this, Kaon still retained a creepy affection for.

“You,” Helex sneered, lunging forward, but Vos  – no  – Dominus Ambus, was no longer in front of him.

“It’s a bit pointless to kill me now, wouldn’t you say?”

“I could kill you a million times over and still not be satisfied,” Helex shot back.

The imposter shrugged.  “I suppose that is perfectly within your character.  Always were a bit stubborn, weren’t you?  Stubborn and predictable.  The whole brain module thing  – quite unsanitary.”

“Coming from the mech that goes around sniffing exhaust pipes.”

Ambus narrowed his eyes.  “You are still loyal to the cause that took your life?”

How was he supposed to answer that question?  “I . . .”

“Don’t bother.  I get the sense you’re a bit more savvy than the last time we spoke.”  He knelt beside Kaon’s inert form.  “Do you think he deserved this?  Was Tarn right when he ripped the head from Kaon’s shoulders  – Kaon who trusted him, who had gone to him for comfort, who had been with him since the beginning.  Do you think it was right for him to crush Kaon’s head into fine dust?”

Helex’s tanks churned.  He’d killed many mechs over the vorns, but he’d liked Kaon . . . he’d liked the Imposter too though, and that hadn’t stopped him from gleefully partaking in the torturous demise of the traitor.  On the other hand, he knew full well  _ why _ Tarn had done what he’d done, and it was as far from ‘okay’ as it got.

“How about this, then?  Do you believe it was okay for Kaon to do the exact same thing to an Autobot who had risked his life to save my successor from the brink of death?”

“Well yeah.  He was an Autobot.  We’re at war.”

“You weren’t though, and hadn’t been for some time.  My fate, I understand.  I knew the risks going in, and that Autobot did too.  But still, he risked his life to save your little friend.”

Helex turned away in a huff.  “What does any of this matter?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?” Ambus was close now, standing right in front of him.  Surprised, Helex stumbled away, tripping over Kaon’s body and landing on the ground.  “What  _ does  _ any of this matter?  You’re dead, Helex.  All of you are.  And not just the once.  Where are you at, I wonder?  The third?”

“The third?  The third what?”  He shifted backwards in hopes of regaining at least a shred of dignity.

“Death, of course.  You’re dead, Helex.  So why do you still live on?  Why do you refuse to rest?”

Helex cocked his head, starting to feel more than a little confused.  “What are you blathering on about?”

“This place.  This plane.  This Purgatory.”

“Yeah, okay,” Helex snorted, pushing himself back up, mindful of Kaon’s body.  He was surprised that the ghastly thing was still here.  “Do you actually know what you’re talking about, or are you just pulling nonsense from your stupid traitorous brain module.”  He licked his lips.  “I could solve that particular problem for you, if you’d like.”

Ambus remained unintimidated.  “It is a theory, but it is not without precedent.  I have, after all, been here longer than any of you.”

“Yeah, sure,” Helex snorted.  “You know so much, why don’t you answer your own question?  Why do  _ you _ refuse to rest?”

Again, his efforts to dismiss and deride were met with apathy.  “I sinned just as you have, just as all of us did.  I believed it to be for a good cause, but my victims suffered all the same.”

“Whoopdee fucking doo.  What should any of that matter?  We’re dead now, and I can’t say I’ve been feeling particularly guilty like.”

Ambus shook his head.  “Tell me, Helex, have you been devoured by a Sparkeater yet?”

Such a simple question should not have left him at a loss for words, and yet, Helex couldn’t keep from gaping.  “Are . . . are you saying you have?”

“Those Sparkeaters who hunt you down with such fervor?  They are vengeance, the guilt your spark bears for those you hurt in life, which is why there are so many.”  There was a click and a whirr, and the next thing Helex knew, Ambus’s chest plates were sliding open, revealing the spark within.  It seemed a foolish thing to do, given Helex’s earlier threats, but taking in the sight of the very essence of one of his most despised enemies, murder, for once, was the farthest thing from Helex’s mind.

He’d seen plenty of sparks in his lifetime, blue and green, great and small, strong and weak, but none like this.  Dominus Ambus’s spark was blue as any, brilliant energy pulsing around a nearly white core.  But while most sparks held a steady stream of blue light that circled around the center to form a perfect, evenly-distributed sphere, the same could not be said for this one.  There were several areas within the spark’s circumference where the energy did not flow, like holes in the soul, patches of buried black, that no light could penetrate.  Helex had never seen anything like that before, least of all on the mech who stood before him, whose spark he was  _ quite _ acquainted with.

“What  _ is _ that?” he asked, too unnerved to keep up his threatening demeanor.

“Just what it looks like  – holes in the spark.  Every time a sparkeater kills you, they take a little more of you with them, until eventually, there is nothing of you left.  At least, I’d assume.  I only have myself as a sample.”

“Well, I can’t imagine anyone would object to using you as a guinea pig.”

Ambus narrowed his eyes, but otherwise left the comment unacknowledged.  “Every time you die in this place, a little more of your guilt manifests, and a few more Sparkeaters take form.  You die in this place only when your guilt wins out  – the more you die, the more Sparkeaters there are, the greater the chance of you ceasing to be.”

Was there any merit to this theory?  Helex had been in this place for years, but he’d never been a mech particularly ruled by his guilt.  It wasn’t until the Sparkeaters had taken Kaon’s visage that he’d even thought to feel regret for his actions in life, so he had no real way of confirming whether or not the words were true.  Was this even the real Imposter?

“So what,” Helex said slowly, “you’re saying that we’re wandering this fragged up wasteland made of our memories and nightmares and hallucinations, and we’re gonna keep right on wandering until we give in to our guilt and let the Sparkeaters get us?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Well, that’s fragged.”  He cast a glance down at Kaon once more.  Maybe Tarn deserved the fate, but Helex didn’t feel that the rest of them did.  How were they any more guilty than the next mech?  Than Tarn?  Than Megatron?  Ambus himself had admitted that he too was guilty enough to find himself in this place, and, objectively speaking, he was probably the least reprehensible of any of them.  Though on second thought, his guilt was probably greater than that the rest of the DJD combined.  Stupid Autobot moral code.

“So our choices are to wander or to cease to be.”

“Something like that, yes,” Ambus said slowly, his own attention drifting to Kaon’s body.

“And you’re asking me why I’m still wandering, rather than the alternative.”

“In essence.”

Helex laughed, and flopped to the nonexistent floor.  “Well that should be obvious.  I ain’t got much in the way of regrets.  I like who I was; wouldn’t change a thing about my life, ‘cept maybe for that slag what happened on the Necroworld.  Why would I wanna get eaten by a Sparkeater?”

A slight frown formed on Ambus’s lips, and, perhaps unwisely, he too took a seat on the floor, tracing a finger along Kaon’s tesla coils.  “You would prefer an existence with no meaning, to what awaits once you cease to be.  I suppose I’m not surprised.”

“Damn right . . .”  Though that did bring certain realizations to Helex’s mind.  “You never answered my question.  You were a goody-goody who did ‘bad things’ for what you thought was ‘the greater good,’ so of course  _ you’d _ feel guilty.  But why did you stick around then, instead of letting the Sparkeaters have their way with you?”

Ambus shrugged.  “At first, I didn’t fight it.  I believed wholeheartedly that I deserved whatever fate they wished for me.  And yet as I fell, again and again and again, I began to realize that I didn’t want it.  When they eat you, you get the barest taste of your fate on the other side of this Purgatory, of the Hell that awaits you, and I was afraid.  I knew I deserved it, but I didn’t want it.  Whatever it was, I couldn’t accept it.  So I ran, and I kept running.”

Well, wasn’t that just wonderful?  He could keep running for all time in this nowhere land, or he could condemn himself to an eternity of torment.  Neither seemed a particularly good choice.  “What, so that’s it?  Two equally rotten choices?  Frag, that’s stupid.”

“We hardly deserve better than that.”

“So you say,” Helex sneered.  “But what do you know?  Only what you’ve seen, yeah?  And there’s way more to this place than what any of us know.”  For the first time, Ambus looked up from Kaon’s body, staring at Helex with suspicion in his optics.  

“Indeed, but I don’t see the opportunity for any other alternative.  There is no great redemption waiting for mechs like us.  There’s only the agony of the Pit, or the terror of waiting for it.  We deserve no more than that.”

“Speak for yourself,” Helex barked a laugh.  “No one in this life is innocent.  Not you, not me, not your Optimus Prime, or Megatron, or Tarn, or whoever.”

“True, but there are few so vile as we were.  All we can do is accept it.”

“Like frag!”  Ambus had no time to move as Helex reached for him, and shoved that surprisingly unstruggling frame into his smelter.  Tragically, he didn’t feel the imposter burn.  Instead, he faded, presumably phasing to a new location.  What a shame.

But Helex didn’t care one way or the other.  The former Vos had always been an arrogant little know-it-all  – never could imagine that he was wrong, never could see himself making mistakes.  Well, look at what had happened to him!  He’d messed up back then, and he was messing up now.  He could feel free to wallow in his guilt for as long as he wanted, but Helex wasn’t about to do the same.  And wherever he was, Tesarus wouldn’t sit by and wait for the encroaching Hell either.  And Vos . . . well, he was less sure about Vos, but Tesarus at least would be there to force the little weakling to keep hanging on.  Not one of them was so weak, so stupid as to go running into the arms of the Sparkeaters.

There had to be another way.

Again, he looked at Kaon.  What was up with this Kaon?  Despite his years spent in this . . . Purgatory?  Is that what Ambus had called it?  Regardless, he’d never been able to find Kaon.  Tarn and Vos and Tesarus, yes, but never Kaon.  Was this him?  This broken, headless waste of a mech?  Surely not!  What reason would Kaon  – vain Kaon, vicious Kaon, cold and haughty and smug Kaon, have for staying in such a pathetic state?  And if this  _ was _ him, surely the Sparkeaters would have made quick work of him.

Kaon’s frame shivered, the first movement the thing had made, and his core took on a soft light.  Small bolts of violet electricity pulsed down the length of his tesla coils, dissipating harmlessly into the air.  Well, he certainly had phenomenal timing.

“Kaon?” he asked, reaching forward to poke at the slowly-reviving frame.  He still had no head, but his fingers were moving, groping in Helex’s direction.  Oh frag.  “Kaon, please tell me that’s not you.  Last thing we need is  _ two _ useless hunks of scrap metal.

“He . . . lx?”  Sound echoed in the hollow expanse of Kaon’s chest, where his head and spinal strut had once rested.  Cautiously, Helex grabbed that small frame, and hoisted him up.  

“Frag it all, it  _ is _ you, isn’t it.  The frag is wrong with you?  Why do you still have no head?  You know you don’t have to run around decapitated, right?  Vos and Tess and I all managed to pull ourselves together after what Lord Megatron did to us.  Tarn too, I suppose.”

“Tarn . . .”  The word rattled bitterly throughout Kaon’s chest cavity.  “Tarn . . . Tarn . . . Tarn . . . Tarn . . . Tarn . . .”

“Uh, yeah.  Tarn.  The sick slagpile.”  Kaon’s core glowed brighter, and the electricity pulsing up his coils grew stronger, making the jump into Helex’s frame.  He hadn’t expected it to hurt quite as much as it did, but frag, for being such a little mech, Kaon sure could hit hard.  With a startled shout, Helex threw his friend as far as he could manage.  “Frag!  Kaon, watch it!”

The little aft probably should have taken some damage from the impact, but as best as Helex could tell, he was unharmed.  Better, even.  The tips of a crest were poking from the hollow of his chest, raising higher and higher  – a head rising into existence, while all the while, the broken mech was struggling to his feet in a manner that resembled the stop-motion footage from those old films Tarn had been a fan of.

“Kaon?” he tried, beginning to feel the barest hint of worry.

“Tarn . . . Tarn . . . where?”  He stumbled closer, easily covering the distance between them in far fewer steps than it should have taken.  His hands were on the glass of Helex’s chest, a smile on his fresh lips, in his vacant optics.  “Where . . . is . . . Tarn?”

Helex’s face took on a look of concern.  Great.  He was stuck out here with a Kaon who was not only broken, but who had apparently lost his damn mind.  Why was it always him to get stuck with these guys?  Couldn’t it happen to Tesarus for once?  

“The frag should I know?  The idiot decided to throw a pity party for himself, then went and got eaten by a Sparkeater.”

The empty sockets of Kaon’s face narrowed; he was clearly dissatisfied with that answer.  “Where?!  Where is . . . Tarn?”

“I.  Don’t.  Know,” Helex hissed back, grabbing Kaon’s wrists in his set smaller hands, and pushing him away.  “I thought he was dead, but according to our dear friend, The Mech Formerly Known As Vos, I guess he may still be out there somewhere.”  To his relief, Kaon perked up at that.

“The . . . Pet?”

Oh thank Primus, or whatever.  “Yes, the Pet.  He was here.  Gone now, but we had a nice chat.” 

“Where?” Kaon insisted, stepping forward again, like a fragging zombie-bot.  

“How should I know?  This place is a giant, slagged up mystery dimension.  I met up with Tess and Vos for a bit, but then we got caught up in some fuckery, and Tarn killed us, and now I don’t know where anyone is, which is just fragging swell.”

Kaon cocked his head, frowning.  “You . . . don’t know.”

“I said that already, yeah.  Glad to see you got your audial receptors back.”

With the confirmation, Kaon seemed to lose interest in Helex.  He turned on his heel and began walking away.  Like frag was Helex going to let that happen.  If he ever  _ did _ run into Tesarus again, the soft-sparked idiot would never forgive him for letting Kaon out of his sight.  “Where do you think you’re going?”

Kaon didn’t bother stopping as he answered.  “Tarn, the Pet . . . they are . . . not here.  I will find them.”

“What,  _ you _ know where they are?”

As predicted, Kaon couldn’t answer that question.  Still, he didn’t much seem to care.  He just . . . kept fragging walking.  All Helex could do was follow.  Whatever was wrong with Kaon, Helex hoped it was a good kind of wrong  – the kind of wrong that could get him and the others out of Purgatory and into . . . well, some place that wasn’t a cesspool of agony and penitence, if such a thing was possible.  Whatever the case, he didn’t exactly have anything better to do at the moment.  So he too kept walking, hoping against hope that Kaon knew just where he was going.


	7. The Verge of Connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vos manages to escape his own repeating memories, only to find himself in Tesarus's instead.

_ The wicked will perish!  The wicked will perish! The wicked will perish! _

It was growing to be a familiar scene, waking alone in his box, while his spark tried its damndest to tear him apart from the inside out.  Vos was getting used to coming around in a state of sheer agony, sooner or later he would grow numb to it. Alas, it seemed as though the universe was leaning towards later.

He sobbed - at least he had a voice with which to do so.  That was a good sign. But having a physical form meant that there were even more ways to feel pain.  Every joint, fuel line, every strut, felt as though it would melt from the heat put out by his spark, and the ability to cry did nothing to alleviate any of that.  He hunched further forward, around his offending core, using what little leeway his box afforded him.

He needed to get out of here.  As much as he loved his box, he couldn’t stay within its confines a second longer.  Something was happening - he didn’t understand it, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there.  He and the rest of the DJD kept reliving the same events, dying, coming back. There was a reason for it, and a reason why their lot were the only ones in this hellscape.  Maybe, if he found out what that reason was, they would be allowed to rest.

Did they deserve rest?

Who cared?  Vos was sick of the pity party, and he was sick of suffering.  He didn’t want to hurt anymore. He didn’t want to be alone, and he didn’t want to be in this box.  

He shifted, trying his damndest to transfer the pain in his body into strength, into a force he could use to break his way out of the box, but it had been built to hold a struggling rifle in place indefinitely.  It would not budge, no matter how hard he tried.

So he tried harder.  He’d been lucky the last two times.  The others had saved him back then, but they weren’t here right now.  He was alone and trapped in a box, just as he’d been for the vast majority of his life; he would have to get out on his own.  

Somehow.

_ Primus, spare my spark. _

It was hopeless.  Vos had been in many tight scrapes before, but none had been quite so bad as this.  He offlined his optics, curled up even further, and sobbed. There was nothing he could do, not while he was restricted so, not while no one knew where he was or how to get him.  This was just like it had been at the beginning of his imprisonment, how he had longed for release, for death, for a savior, anything. His master had forgotten him; he’d had no idea how long he’d be trapped in the cramped darkness - maybe forever.

But as he fell into the memory, something strange happened: the tight walls keeping him pinned in place vanished, the air grew warm, buzzing with the EM fields of other bots.  He’d escaped! By retreating into his own head, he had escaped his prison. He was sure there was some greater meaning behind that, but he didn’t care enough to dwell on it. All that mattered right now was that he was out.

Now he just needed to figure out where he’d wound up.

“Boys, it is my pleasure to introduce our new Vos.”

_ Oh scrap. _

Even after all he’d been through, he recognized the scene that played out before him clear as day.  Tarn stood in the foyeur of the Peaceful Tyranny, gesturing at his shoulder, where Vos should have been sitting.  There was nobody there now, but that fact bore no effect on the memory. Across from Tarn, Helex, Kaon, and Tesarus were reacting with a mix of relief, suspicion, smugness, glee, and regret.  Not one of the mechs involved were quite intact either, with Tesarus, Tarn, and Helex being a mish-mash of parts barely held together in the shape of a mech, innards trailing grotesquely from their gaping wounds.  Kaon simply had no head. Par for the course, then.

“A little scrawny, ain’t he?” said Helex, to which Vos should have uttered some Primal insult, would have, had he cared enough to watch this scene play out.  These didn’t seem to be his friends, so much as a memory of his friends, and therefor, remaining was nothing but a waste of time. He needed to find his way out, and back to the others.

“I assure you, our little friend is fully capable of handling himself.  << _ That natural is traverse?>>   _ He’d said the last part to Vos in Primal Vernacular, as though sharing some private joke between the two.  The only real joke was his pathetic attempts at the language. Still, eager to impress, Vos had nodded.

“Is he going to betray us too?” Kaon huffed.  Upon closer inspection, he held a chain in his hand - a leash of sorts - though the pet that was meant to be on the other end was nowhere to be seen.  “I’m wondering if we can trust your judgment of character at this point - hrrk!”

Kaon hunched over, clutching his spark chamber, as Tarn spoke to him.  “Kaon, love, do shut up.” He stopped speaking, and Kaon stumbled forward, free from the lethal grasp of Tarn’s voice.  It had been a strange thing to witness for the first time - a disciplinary measure that Tarn had rarely used over the years, at least in Vos’s tenure on the team.  In retrospect, he was surprised that Tarn hadn’t used it more.

_ Monster!  Wicked, evil creature! _

He slipped from Tarn’s shoulders, unsurprised that the scene continued without him.  If he was going to make it out of here, he had to do something disruptive - preferably something that didn’t result in him fighting all four of his teammates.  He may have been a capable fighter, but he was easily the weakest of their lot.

“I think he’s kind of cute,” grinned Tesarus, his attention still fixed on Tarn’s shoulder.  At this point, Vos was supposed to hiss his protestation, though he was too busy crawling along the ground, looking for a doorway to do so, and coming out strangely door free.  This room didn’t seem to exist in reality - more of a blob of memory that stopped just beyond the forms of his companions. Vos’s absence didn’t stop Tesarus from stepping forward and leaning over to pat his memory on the head like the condescending aft he was.  But that was where Vos saw his opening.

The grinder was hovering over him, just the right size for him to scurry up into - and indeed, Vos had found himself dozing in there many times over the years.  He couldn’t see all the way through, and if he couldn’t see the end, then that meant it may not exist. Weirder things had become portals to other memories in this place.  

He took his opportunity to crawl up Tesarus’s frame, which stumbled backwards when an angry rifle shot his encroaching hand, but the movement was not enough to shake Vos off.  Practiced motions got him into the grinder, which, as anticipated, was far deeper than it had any business being. All that was left to do was crawl through.

The path was long, and grew darker with every inch he crawled.  Slowly, the teeth of the grinder grew more blunt, soft, shimmering red in the light of Vos’s optics.  Crystals. Tesarus was full of crystals for some reason. Or perhaps he’d already left Tesarus.

Indeed, he soon found the light at the end of the tunnel, though it wasn’t much of a light.  When he emerged, after all, the world was still dark - a crystal farm gleaming under the light of Luna II, and on that farm was a familiar gargantuan Grinder.  It had been a bit surreal to travel through Tesarus’s body to find Tesarus on the other side, but at this point, there was nothing that could bother Vos.

Unlike the Tesarus in the previous scenario, this one was missing the gruesome wounds - a complete being, just as Vos had known him in life, save for the empty look on his face.  He was picking crystals from the ground, and shoving them into his gaping chest - harvesting them, Vos supposed. He approached, curious to find out if this was truly his friend, or yet another memory construct.

“Tesh?” he croaked, but the behemoth didn’t move.  So he tried again. “Tesh-a-rush?” It was difficult to form the Neocybex pronunciation with his database of Primal Vernacular sounds, but the end result came close enough to get Tesarus’s attention, at least.

The titan turned his way, a frown slowly forming across his lips.  “I’m sorry, who are you?”

That didn’t bode well.  Most likely this was yet another memory, and worse, the only visible escape was through Tesarus’s grinder once again.  Somehow he doubted that this total stranger would just let him in, and though Vos wasn’t exactly weak, he wasn’t keen on fighting Tesarus, memory or not.

“Vos,” he said, pointing to his own face.  Tesarus gave him a skeptical look.

“Okay Vos.  Wanna tell me what you’re doing out here?  Shouldn’t be anyone other than Harvesters working these fields, and you sure as the Pit ain’t one of those.  You some kind of bandit?” His lips twisted upwards suddenly, belying the sadism he would maintain later in life.  “Y’know, I hear they give fat rewards for turning in thieves.” He stepped closer, but Vos did not retreat. There was nothing Tesarus could do to him that he hadn’t already suffered by this point.  Why bother being afraid?

<<I’m not a thief, moron!>> he snapped, prompting a confused stare from his old partner.

“What was that?”

Vos sighed.  Right. This was still a problem.  <<Should’ve known better than to bother.  You don’t speak Primal Vernacular now - figures you wouldn’t speak it in . . . this is the past, right?>>  He looked around, taking in the dull blue glow of the crystal farm that expanded all the way up to the edge of the void.  Vos had never seen this place before. <<It’s  _ your _ past.  You were, what, some kind of farmer?>>

“Argh, speak Neocybex, you hick!” Tesarus snarled, stomping forward, just shy of crushing Vos beneath his foot.

<<Who’s calling who a hick?>> Vos hissed back, scurrying out of the way before Tesarus could try squishing him again. “Stop!” 

“Oh, so you do speak?”  There was no reason for him to look so smug, and yet there he was, smiling as though he’d won some important argument.  Past Tesarus was as much of an aft as present Tesarus.

“A . . . small,” he said.  No, that was wrong! Yet try as he might, he couldn’t remember the proper word to express himself.  As predicted, Tesarus responded with a smug smirk.

“But you understand me, right?  How does that work?”

Vos considered that for a moment.  “Glitch,” he said at last, this time earning a sharp glare and another near stomping.

“What the frag did you just call me?!”

Vos scurried out of the way, desperately pointing at himself as he screamed, “Glitch, glitch, glitch - me!”  This was pointless. As he was, he had no way of properly communicating with his teammate, and Tesarus was in no mood to listen.  He needed to get out of here, before the Harvester finally succeeded in squashing the life from him.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Tesarus hissed, though at least he’d paused in his assault.  “So tell me, glitch, what are you doing all the way out here. You’re what, a rifle, right?”  He leaned forward, wrapping oversized fingers around the gun barrel that emerged from Vos’s back, and before he had time to react, Vos found himself plucked from the ground, left dangling helplessly in the air.

_ Frag. _

“Pretty sure that counts as Disposable, don’t it?  You should be in an armory, right? Can’t have a gun like you just walkin’ around in public.  That slag’s dangerous. And yet, somehow you managed to find yourself all the way out on Luna 2.  You’re a runaway, aintcha?”

<<The truth is far more complicated than that,>> he muttered in sheer, stubborn protest.  A good shaking got him to offer Tesarus his best attempt at a translation. “Thought - long ago thought.  Um . . . mammary?”

Tesarus snorted.  “I’m sorry, what? You pick that up from the organics?”

No, no he’d messed up again.  What was the damned word? “MEMORY!” he cried out.  “Memory! Memory!”

He was moving through the air now; Tesarus had brought him to eye level, close enough to reach out and touch, to fix a scrutinizing frown on him.  “Mech, that makes even less sense. You think I forgot something?”

This was getting nowhere, but at least Tesarus had provided him an opportunity to escape.  Vos would have grinned, had he a mouth. Instead, he whispered:

“Tesh-a-rush.”

“What?”

“Tesh-a-rush.”

“Speak up,” he said with a frown.  “I can’t hear you.”

“Tesh-a-rush . . .”

He pulled Vos even closer, clearly trying to hear a little better.  But it was all Vos needed. With a practiced ease, Vos removed his mask, and shoved the spiked end into Tesarus’s face, sadly missing his obscured optics.  Still, the result was exactly what he’d hoped for. 

In his pain and surprise, Tesarus screamed, dropping Vos, who was quick to get a handhold on that bulky frame, and to scurry up and into the grinder.  It would have been suicidal in any other circumstance, and indeed, the blades did start spinning in an effort to dislodge the little monster that was Vos, but it did no good.  With Tesarus and the crystal field out of sight, the world was quick to shift again, seeing Vos emerge in some industrial center, with smog-clogged air, grease stained streets, a drizzle of acid rain pouring from the black sky above, and a familiar, industrial-class Harvester collapsed against a dumpster in a gloomy alleyway.  Another memory then.

“Who’s there?” Tesarus snapped, surprisingly alert for being in such a pathetic state.  Vos paused in his approach, regarding that hulking frame with caution.

“Vos,” he replied after a moment.

“’S not a name,” Tesarus groaned, but made no further protest.  He did, however, force himself to sit up a little bit straighter against the dumpster at his back.  What a sorry sight this was, and a peculiar one too. It was definitely something private, something that Tesarus would have no desire to share with Vos, and yet here they were.

“Te –“ Vos began before cutting himself off.  Tesarus hadn’t been particularly receptive to his Decepticon name in their previous memory, perhaps because it took place before he’d received it.  Vos didn’t want a repeat of their last encounter, and with any luck, using the mech’s proper name for this point in his life would help with that. “Shizzzzorzzzaw,” he hissed, trying his hardest to approximate the consonant-heavy sounds of Neo Cybex.  Unfortunately, though Tesarus proved more responsive to this name than the last, it wasn’t quite in the way Vos had hoped.

While it took Tesarus a moment to parse exactly what it was Vos had said, the moment enlightenment dawned upon him was all too clear; his eyes grew sharp, and he leant forward, secondary arms ready to reach out and grab hold of Vos, who took a few steps back, eyes locked on the terrifying appendages, ready to flee should the need arise.

“How do you know my name?!” Tesarus snapped.  One of the secondary arms lunged, and even ready as he was, it was all Vos could do to scurry out of the way in time.  At least Tesarus seemed dedicated to remaining on the ground. Vos didn’t want to think about how lethal those arms would be with the added range.  Come to think of it, between that fact and their current venue, he was starting to piece together exactly what had happened to old Scizzorsaw.

“Vos, friend,” he tried, earning another lunge from one of those spindly arms.

“I think I’d remember befriending a rifle,” Tesarus growled back, then thought better of it.  “Actually, yeah. Come on over here, buddy. I’d like to get  _ real _ friendly with the likes of you.”

Like the Pit was Vos moving after an invitation like that, though fortunately, Tesarus didn’t push.  Instead, he slumped back against the dumpster once more, heaving a great sigh.

“Just frag off, pipsqueak.  I’ve been fighting off scavengers all day.  Don’t think I won’t rip you apart if I have to.”

“Shizzaszaw . . . hurt?” Vos tried, earning him a glare.

“I’m fit enough to slag your sorry aft,” was the harsh reply.  Yes then. Vos’s eyes drifted downward, seeking out whatever injury would’ve lamed Tesarus so.  “Oy, eyes up here!” Once more, Vos was dodging the arm. How did it have so much range? “What’s wrong with you anyway?” Tesarus asked after a moment.  “Your vocalizer fragged? Someone dump you down here too?”

Vos nodded.  It was easier that way.

“Makes sense,” he laughed.  “You spend a lifetime doing your duty, only to be left for scrap the first time you break down.  Fragged up world we live in, eh?”

Again, Vos nodded.  And yet, despite his best efforts to be agreeable, Tesarus let out a deep growl.

“Okay, but seriously.  Frag off. I don’t know how you know me, and I don’t care.  Last thing I need right now is a glitch-ridden runt what thinks he can use me for some nefarious scheme or another.  I don’t want you here. Frag off.”

It was Vos’s turn to groan.  He’d tried playing nice. He’d tried giving the big lug his space.  He’d tried reflecting on his actions, punishing himself for his sins in life, had died and woken up in his box time and again and again, and still he had no idea what this stupid world wanted from him.  Currently, it seemed to be conspiring to see Vos and Tesarus together, but only Primus knew why. He’d never held any great desire to see his friend’s past, and he couldn’t exactly alter events from within a memory.  But here he was, trapped in a slimy alleyway with a belligerent murder machine, minimal communication skills, and no idea as to how to proceed. Anyone would’ve been frustrated.

“Why are you still here?” Tesarus hissed.

Frag it all; he was done being nice.

<<You’re the one who dragged me into this in the first place, you colossal aft.  I was perfectly content to suffer alone in my box for the rest of time, but you just kept on hunting me down and bringing me back to the fight.   _ You’re _ the one who should frag off and leave  _ me _ alone!  I’m done wasting my words on you.  I’m done trying to convince you to – I don’t even know, what I’m trying to do here!  Wake you up? Bring you back to reality? I just – I’m so fragging  _ done _ !>>

Tesarus stared in dumb surprise throughout Vos’s rant, and remained in that blissfully silent state all the way up until the moment that Vos decided to turn and walk away.

“W-wait!  Come back here you little twig!  You can’t just leave. What the frag – what was that?  Come on!”

Without looking back, Vos gathered up the rest of his remaining energy to tell Tesarus exactly what was on his mind, in a language that even the giant idiot would understand.

“Frag . . . off.”

“Wait!  Vos, wait!”

_ What _ ?

Vos whirled around at the sound of his name.  He didn’t know what had finally brought a little sense his old companion, but it was too little too late.  By the time he was facing the spot that Tesarus had sat only moments prior, the world had shifted again, leaving him on one more bloody battlefield, but this one was different.  This one had Tesarus. Again. Curious, he drew closer.

Tesarus was standing over the mangled corpse of what appeared to have at one point been some kind of Jet - if only because there were a few crumpled wings lying on the ground beside the corpse.  It actually looked rather like the aftermath of an average DJD visit, from the dismemberment, disfigurement, and copious amounts of energon staining the snowy earth. But Tesarus didn’t look pleased.

“Vos . . .” he mumbled, barely a whisper.  Vos probably shouldn’t have been able to hear the word from his distance, but he chalked it up to the mysterious physics of this purgatory.

<<Tesarus?  What’s wrong?  I’m right here.>>  He crept closer, but Tesarus paid him no mind.  His attention was still fully fixed on the corpse before him.

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t get here in time.  I’m sorry I let those blasted Autobots do this to you.  I - I killed ‘em right good though.” Without warning, he collapsed to the ground, leaning over the corpse and fiddling with the components.  On closer inspection, it seemed he was trying to put the greying body parts back together. 

“You woulda been so proud of me, Vos.  Those Autobots never saw it coming. But that’s what they get, right?  No one crosses the DJD like that, I don’t care what side you’re on.” He laughed, a desperate, broken sound, and leaned back to admire his handiwork.

Vos looked as well, at the pitiful arrangement of crushed fragments laid out on the snow in the vague shape of a mech.  He was beginning to understand what what happening here.

<< This . . .  This isn’t Dominus.  Is this the first Vos? >>

At last, Tesarus spared him a glance.  “Oh, hey Vos,” he said casually, as though there was nothing strange about his present day teammate appearing in his memory.  “This is the first Vos, yeah. You never did meet him, come to think of it - heh - why would you have? Did I ever tell you? He and I totally had a thing for awhile; isn’t that crazy?  He was the last one to join the original DJD and I was the second Tesarus. I think we both bonded over being latecomers.”

<< Why are you telling me this? >>

Tesarus continued, paying Vos no mind.  He was too fixated on the corpse before him.  “He died out here. Ambushed by some Autobots while waiting for a rendezvous.  He was, like, a really good fighter, but he’s just so small - there’s no way he coulda taken out seven bots on his own.  Frankly, I don’t think small bots like this ever had any business being on a team of powerhouses like the DJD.”

<< How patronizing of you. >>

“They just - keep dying.  I hate it. I hate losing my friends like this.  I - I’m just so tired of losing people. We never shoulda left him behind.  Maybe I never forgave Tarn for it.” He collapsed backwards in the snow, pulling up his knees as best he could.  “Maybe I never forgave myself.”

<< Yes, thank you for that insight, >> Vos griped, << but have you considered that I don’t care about any of this?  It’s a war. Folks get unlucky. I mean, look at all of us. Look at  _ you _ .  Being big didn’t exactly save you and Tarn and Helex from being torn apart by Megatron.  So I guess what I’m trying to say is, what’s the point? Why am I here? I don’t care about the original Vos. >>

As though startled, Tesarus sat up straighter, then turned his attention downward, to tiny Vos standing in the snow below.  If he’d finally realized what was happening, however, he didn’t get time to proclaim it. The snow that flitted through the air began to move faster and faster, and the sky changed with it, transforming to night to day to night.  The world blurred, twisting and warping, the only constant, Tesarus and Vos. Even the body of his predecessor had vanished.

By the time the world stopped spinning, they were on a different planet, still snowy, but less gory.  Come to think of it, wasn’t this Delphi?

“W-what happened?” said Tesarus, looking back and forth.  “Wait, I know this place! This is where we found out that the second Vos was . . . oh Primus!  Vos? Where are you?”

Vos was a little less thrown by the sudden shift.  He’d been undergoing rapid changes in venue all day; he was getting used to it.  For that reason, he had no problem taking in the new scene, the energon that stained the ground, the grey, clawed mech, curled up and whimpering at the feet of a familiar purple tank, whole this time, as opposed to the deranged mech that had visited his memory earlier.  Did that mean this was the  _ real _ Tarn?

“Vos!” said Tesarus, finally bothering to look down.  “Oh good, you’re still here!”

But Tesarus wasn’t the only one to notice him.

“Well well, look what we have here.”  Tarn was watching the two of them with an unreadable look in his eyes.

“Tarn!” Tesarus cried out.  “Tarn, are you alright? You’re not a sparkeater?”

Tarn didn’t reply.  His gaze was fixed solely on Vos, with such intensity that Vos couldn’t help but shy away, withdrawing closer to the safety of Tesarus’s towering form.

“Tesarus,” said Tarn, his voice musical, deep, and producing a tone that sounded strangely deeper than typical.  At his back, Tesarus faltered, his EM field pulsing in sudden fear.

_ Oh no. _

“Why don’t you leave us.”

Tesarus collapsed to the ground, and it was all Vos could do to scurry out of the way before being crushed beneath the behemoth.  Unfortunately, Tarn wasn’t one to let up. A strong hand wrapped itself around one of Vos’s slender arms, and the next thing Vos knew, he was being dragged away by his former leader.

<< What are you doing? >> his hissed.  << What’s wrong with you?! Why would you attack Tesarus like that?  And what do you want with  _ me _ ?  I’m no different than the rest of them?  So why?>> He writhed and kicked and clawed, but no matter how he struggled, Tarn did not release him.

<<Tarn!>> he tried again, to no avail.  There was much about this purgatory that Vos would never understand, but after all that had happened in his short eternity trapped here, one thing was becoming increasingly clear.  The mech that he had once known as Tarn, had once respected enough to lay down his life for, who he’d followed into the belly of Hell itself, was gone. And in its place, something lesser, something pathetic and petty and weak had slithered in.  Physically, Vos stood no chance of throwing off this monster, but he still had his words - for once, he had his words.

Vos stopped struggling, though that didn’t stop Tarn in his single minded quest to drag him off into the abyss.  That was fine; Vos wasn’t afraid.

<<Y’know, I think I’m starting to understand.>>

Tarn made no reply, though the snowy landscape had begun to melt away into a black plane, it’s emptiness interrupted only by the occasional spark of color flickering by like an insect.

<<I resented you Tarn, for what you did.  For the single-minded devotion to the cause - to the point where your idea of what Lord Megatron should be ultimately grew more important than what Lord Megatron actually  _ was _ .  I resented your arrogance, your hypocrisy, your weakness.  You were so afraid of losing face in front of a mech you hate, that you killed one of your best friends in cold blood.  And like blind idiots, the rest of us followed you right to our deaths!

<<But you know all of this already.  After all, nobody hates Tarn more than Tarn himself, am I right?>>

Evidently he was, for suddenly he was flying through the empty air, flung to an intangible ground in a heap of spindly limbs and aching struts.  Stunned by the unexpected impact, he gazed up upon Tarn - or what was left of him. It was only the recent memory of the mech dragging him away that signified that this monster was Tarn at all - the rest of him was gone, leaving behind nothing more than an eerie skeletal structure, with empty sockets, a gaping jaw, a spiky tail-like cable that dangled from his spinal strut, and sharp, hooked claws in place of hands.  He collapsed to the ground, his body dwarfing Vos’s, claws wrapped around Vos’s skinny throat cabling, and the sharp point of his tail scratching a path down Vos’s face plate. With their faces mere inches apart, the deathly, rotting odor that emanated from Tarn’s corspelike frame was cloying, and gazing into those empty eye sockets was like gazing into the very bowels of the Pit.

But Vos was not afraid.  He was a member of the DJD.  He had no fear of the dead, for he had walked through death time and again and again.  He had no fear of the pain, for what more could Tarn do to him at this point? And those eerie eyes were really no different than Kaon’s, which had long been a friendly presence in his life.  Tarn would probably kill him, or steal his spark, but Vos didn’t care. He felt nothing but righteous spite, and even a little pity.

<<That’s what you’re doing, right?>> he choked out, in spite of the claws that were trying to squeeze the words from his throat.  <<You hate yourself so much that you’re even corrupting  _ our _ memories of you.  You may be a sparkeater, but somewhere deep in there, you’re still the same pathetic, cowardly little Tarn you’ve always been!  So go on, do whatever it is you think you’re going to do to me. You’ve still lost.>>

Maybe Vos was right, but Tarn didn’t seem to agree with the philosophy.  Through the Sparkeater’s broken vocaliser, he managed the most broken of groans, shaped into barely-comprehensible words.  “You . . . are . . . too close.” He may have put in the effort to deliver this cryptic message, but that was the end of Tarn’s generosity.  His free hand pried back Vos’s head, exposing the fuel intake he used in place of a mouth. From there, he was quick to latch on with his own gaping maw, using needle thin spikes at the tip of his glossa to pry the intake open.  Then, he began sucking, an icy sensation that hit Vos straight down to his spark, which somehow seemed to be burning.

_ Oh no. _

Tarn was a Sparkeater, and this was how Sparkeaters fed - he was going to slurp Vos’s spark out, straight through his damn intake.  That slimy glossa slid inside of him, far too long, down his throat, down to meet his spark, to caress it with his evil touch. Vos hadn’t been afraid before, but here, having a monstrous beast latched onto his throat, with its vile tongue wrapped around his spark, he couldn’t stave off the primal terror that consumed him.  Again, he struggled, clawing helplessly at Tarn’s superior frame, screaming as best he could with so much pressure on his vocaliser. He could feel his strength waning, his world going black, as his spark was dragged up his throat, through his intake, lingering on the precipice between where it belonged, and Tarn’s wretched mouth.

But then, Tarn collapsed forward, relinquishing his hold on the spark, which was quick to slip back down to Vos’s spark chamber.  He now lay unmoving, sprawled across Vos’s meager weight, with a great smoking crater in his backplate. Strong fingers, the size of Vos’s head, wrapped themselves around his arm and dragged him from his prison, setting him safely back on his feet.

<<Tesarus,>> he breathed, barely able to keep his balance.

“Vos, I - Primus, I’m sorry it took me so long to catch up with you,” he knelt down, pulling Vos into the best approximation of a hug he could manage given their frame differences.  “I was so lost, but you were always there, you kept trying to get through to me. Thank you for that.”

<<Sure.>>  Vos didn’t know what was going on anymore, but if Tesarus thought he did, then that was fine.  Tesarus could lead the way, while Vos’s brain module tried to process what he’d just experienced.  What had Tarn meant by ‘too close?’

He would have thought that they’d leave, that Tesarus would pick him up and take him far away from Tarn and the danger he represented, but for some reason, they hadn’t moved.  Tesarus was staring down at Tarn’s unmoving frame, a thoughtful look on his partially-obscured face. Vos was on the verge of asking him about it, but Tesarus beat him to it, examining the long cable that dangled from Tarn’s spinal strut between his fingers.

“Y’know, you could probably restrain someone pretty easily with something like this.”

<<What do you mean by that?>> Vos replied, inching away from Tarn’s frame.

In one swift motion, Tesarus ripped the cable from Tarn’s frame; Tarn didn’t so much as whimper.  He fixed a cunning smile on Vos, and said, “Let’s take him with us! Get the ol’ gang back together.  I’m sure between the five of us, we can find a way to fix Tarn and get outta this stupid place.” With that said, he got to work, wrapping the cable carefully around Tarn’s frame, which was already starting to resemble its original guise.  Vos didn’t know what Tesarus thought he was doing, and he had absolutely no faith that this would even work, but at the moment he didn’t care. He wasn’t alone anymore, and that was all that mattered.


End file.
